RegulationSep 11 2017

Insurance fraudsters sentenced for £200k steal

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Insurance fraudsters sentenced for £200k steal

An investigation by the City of London Police’s insurance fraud enforcement department found they worked together to make 82 fraudulent payments into the woman’s bank account.

Kevin Macey, 49, and Debbie Starkings, 57, committed fraud against RSA for four years between early 2012 and July 2016.

Macey worked as a personal claims specialist at RSA and colluded with Starkings to make false claims against an insurance policy that she held with the company.

In his role Macey was able to agree to claims made by policyholders, which he did until 31 July 2016, when he took voluntary redundancy from the company.

An investigation of Starkings found Macey had handled her policy and had helped her make five claims over two years which amounted to over £200,000.

Macey then started to make false claims against other people’s policies and then would send the money for those claims to Starkings bank account.

Overall he had processed fraudulent claims for Starkings which amounted to £279,641.

Macey, of Pennington Way, Fareham, was sentenced to three years and four months imprisonment for one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of money laundering.

Meanwhile Starkings, of Cupnor Road, Portsmouth, was sentenced to two years imprisonment, suspended for two years, and a 20 day community order, for one count of theft and one count of money laundering.

Simon Styles, the City of London Police’s financial investigator who led the investigation, said: “Macey abused the position he had been put in by RSA and took complete advantage of his customers, using their details to help him collude with Starkings.

“Starkings was equally complicit in this fraud and her greed meant she went on to submit multiple false claims.

“The sentencing goes to show that it is not possible to get away with this crime and that we will do everything we can to work with the insurance industry to ensure fraudsters are caught and made to pay.”

All claims at RSA are logged on a computerised record system, and internal controls highlighted anomalies with Macey’s handling of a number of claims.

When RSA opened an internal investigation and used the computerised record system to help identify anomalies, they found one bank account had received a number of significant payments and the system helped trace names and others claims associated with that account number.

They found that the account was linked to Starkings who held a contents and building insurance policy with RSA and it was her who was receiving the payments.

RSA referred the case to the City of London Police and a criminal investigation was launched.

John Beadle, the head of financial crime and counter fraud at RSA said: “RSA have a zero tolerance attitude towards any dishonesty involving our staff.

“Once internal controls highlighted the activities of Macey and Starkings, we had no hesitation in reporting the matter to IFED in order that both could be brought to justice.”

 

damian.fantato@ft.com