As one of the most common illegal tasks that people are punished for, insurance fraud is everywhere in the world. All that you have to do to commit insurance fraud is to deceive your insurance company in order to get more money than you are entitled to. It is seen as a punishable offense in every state in the United States. In fact, there are a variety of legal entities that have the sole job of seeking insurance fraud and penalizing the criminals.
The Important Parts of Insurance Fraud
There are several things that need to be proven in order to receive prison sentences for insurance fraud. If you don’t meet these standards or have these elements in your case, you might be charged with something else.
Making a misleading or false statement: The defendant must have knowingly made a misleading or false statement and must be aware that what he/she was saying was false.
False statements were related to the insurance policy and its claim or payment: The false statement has to be directly related to getting paid as a result of the insurance claim.
False statements were material: The statements that were made must be essential in order to receive the payout from the insurance claim.
Insurance Fraud Penalties
There are 2 main types of insurance fraud, and depending on what you’re charged with, your penalties could be incredibly different. First, there is soft fraud. Soft fraud is something that happens when an individual exaggerates a claim that they had once made. For example, stating that more damages were done to their vehicle during a car accident. In most cases, the legal costs and penalties for insurance fraud are minimal in comparison to hard fraud. Defendants could be facing community service, fines, a minimal amount of jail time, or probation.
The second type of fraud is hard fraud. With this title, the individual must have created a story where they lost assets or money for the main purpose of obtaining money through an insurance claim. There are a variety of strict penalties that could be slapped on the defendant, including staying in prison for up to 20 years. The legal costs associated with hard fraud would be far more substantial, as well as you will have to go through months, if not years, of court proceedings before knowing whether you are going to jail or not.
Subjects Covered:
- Auto/Boat
- House
- Health/Medicare/Medicaid
- Business
- Possessions
- Disability/Workman’s Compensation