Police fight mobile recycling fraud
Monday, May 23, 2011 - 11:30:30
People looking to defraud mobile insurance firms will have a tougher time evading the law after a dedicated Police crime unit has made it easier to access records and identify those making false claims.
At the moment the experts believe that a fifth of all mobile phone robberies which are reported to the police are actually fabricated by people looking to skim some cash from insurance firms, according to the Birmingham Mail.
Once they have reported the phone as stolen, the lawbreakers go on to sell the allegedly snatched handset via mobile recycling firms.
Police often find that the mobiles that get reported as stolen and subsequently locked down by network operators, emerge unlocked and ready for resale on the books of mobile phone recycling organisations.
Of course criminals are also known to sell on their illicitly acquired handsets via mobile recycling, but insurance fraudsters use it as a quick way to make money from both policy reimbursements and recycling companies.
The good news is that insurers will now be able to look at a database of more than 118 million policies which should make it easy to identify repeat offenders and find out which claims are real and which are being made without a robbery actually having taken place.
The police have been issuing fines for time wasting to many offenders who have been discovered to have falsely reported mobile theft by harnessing the large data pool available to them.
Spokesperson, Matt Markham, explained that many people who call the police to claim that their mobile has been taken are not fully aware of just how much background information the force has access to, with the discovery of false reports often making it more difficult for individuals to get legitimate insurance in the future.
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