Agents Behaving Badly, Part IV: Phony apps net real charges

[Brian Anderson]

Brian Anderson submitted a new article

Agents Behaving Badly, Part IV: Phony apps net real charges

In our latest roundup of agents caught on the wrong side of the law, we take a look at 3 recent cases involving insurance agents who submitted phony applications.

Continue reading the Original Article.

 

[DHK]

Brian Anderson submitted a new article

Agents Behaving Badly, Part IV: Phony apps net real charges

Continue reading the Original Article.

Strangely enough, someone calling themselves a 'consultant' wasn't listed.

 

[Newby]

Strangely enough, someone calling themselves a 'consultant' wasn't listed.

No but Bankers Life and Casuality was represented.

 

[TampaHound]

This is why I only counterfeit $5 dollar bills and won't get involved in insurance fraud.

 

[shonceman]

What always strikes me about cases like these is that these people apparently think they're the first one to ever do it. Like nobody will notice when the writing agent's name keeps coming up as bene, or an agent suddenly submits lots more apps than normal.

When I was a young staff manager for a debit company, one of my agents was investigated by the company. The company auditor took me along to interview policyholders. As we traveled about, he shared some of the ways he can tell an agent is up to mischief, even from his office in another state. I was amazed how easy it is to spot it, and how really NOT clever these unscrupulous people can be.

 

[Thedude]

he committed insurance fraud and only got about 11,000 in benefits? did i read that correctly?

he's not very good at anything haha

 

[walthamny]

I agree. 11000 dollars. Don't these people learn from Madoff. If you are going to do this, do it big.

 

[DHK]

Back when I worked at a bank, I was taught about how to catch internal fraud on the branch level. This included cashier's checks and wire transfer fraud. I kept thinking that if I was going to do it, I would have to split it all 3 ways in order to get people to do it with me, and then flee the country within 24 hours.

Just not worth it for less than $5 million per person payout, and that would've been hard to do with my transaction approval limits that I had at the time. (I was able to deposits up to $500k and $1 million for wire transfers back in the day.)

 

[shonceman]

Back when I worked at a bank, I was taught about how to catch internal fraud on the branch level. This included cashier's checks and wire transfer fraud. I kept thinking that if I was going to do it, I would have to split it all 3 ways in order to get people to do it with me, and then flee the country within 24 hours.

Just not worth it for less than $5 million per person payout, and that would've been hard to do with my transaction approval limits that I had at the time. (I was able to deposits up to $500k and $1 million for wire transfers back in the day.)

So you actually considered this?

 

[DHK]

Sure I THOUGHT about it. That doesn't mean that I DID anything about it or even attempted anything. Nor did I ever talk to any of my employees about doing anything with me.

But yeah, I thought about what it would take to pull something like that off and make it big enough to be worth it. It's just not worth it.

Plus, cashier's checks can be cancelled out quickly. Wire transfers can be recalled within 24 hours. And just flat out robbing the vault... well, banks don't carry as much cash in their vaults as one might think. At one time, I had at most about $500k in cash, and that wasn't all in $100's. That's a lot of cash and gets heavy.

Not enough to make any kind of attempt worth it. No way.

That's why I sell insurance.