The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has issued its annual report of questionable claims in the United States. Questionable claims are those claims that NICB member insurance companies refer to NICB for closer review and investigation based on one or more indicators of possible fraud. Questionable claims have increased each year over the last three years. The findings ranked the states and cities with the highest number of questionable claims over a three year period: (1) California (58,415); Florida (29,086); (3) Texas (27,107); (4) New York (23,402); and (5) Maryland (10,315). The top five cities were New York (13,564); Los Angeles (7,779); Miami (5,503); Houston (5,464) and Baltimore (3,690).
The top five reasons for questionable claims classifications were: (1) casualty-faked/exaggerated injury (50,472); (2) vehicle-questionable auto/boat/heavy equipment theft (35,508); (3) miscellaneous-prior loss/damage (29,646); (4) miscellaneous-fictitious loss (29,017); and (5) property-suspicious theft/loss non-vehicle (24,867).
NICB’s full report can be viewed and downloaded here.
