Bus Camera Develops Fraud Case

Lights, camera, action! A Massachusetts woman is in trouble with the law because she says she experienced an injury due to a bus crash. No, she isn’t in trouble for being in an accident; she’s in trouble for not being injured.

According to CBS News, police officers are stating that Dolores Alvarez claimed to suffer a painful back injury when a Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority bus was clipped in the rear by a mini-van that sped off.

She may have gotten away with it if there weren’t cameras both inside and outside the bus.

As noted in the Eagle Tribune, Alvarez was one of eight passengers on board when a van tried to pass the bus illegally on the right side, struck it and then drove off. She told Travelers Insurance that the impact of the hit-and-run crash caused her body to move both forward and backward, hitting her neck and back on the seat. The next day, she said, was when she felt severe neck, back and leg pain.

None of the other eight passengers on board at the time of the crash complained of injury or requested an ambulance.

Police note that the surveillance footage tells a much different story than Alvarez. She is seen barely moving when the bus is hit, and there is no sign of her body jerking backward or forward. ”

To anyone watching that video, it’s pretty obvious that nobody got injured,” Lawrence Police Chief John Romero said yesterday.

Alvarez filed an insurance claim after the accident, but police note that when her lawyer saw the video, even he backed off the case. Alvarez was later charged with filing a false insurance claim.

The case marks a return to auto insurance crackdown, which had become a cottage industry in the city. Since 2003 police have arrested as many as 400 people who allegedly staged accidents and then filed fraudulent insurance claims.

Chief Romero says this type of case is a newer version of the crime. “We’re going to see accidents that do take place, but people fabricate injuries or exaggerate them to defraud an insurance agency,” stated Romero.

Last year, budget cuts forced Romero to break up the task force that investigates fraud, but this case has brought police back, partnering them with the industry-funded Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) of Massachusetts.

An office in Lawrence is continuing to be maintained though by two full-time IFB investigators, who have their jobs cut out for them. The previous joint task force was able to charge more than 400 individuals with fraud since its inception in late 2003.

“The message we want to send out is that we are going to be aggressive again in going after these people with our partners (IFB, insurance company investigators, district attorney and state attorney general’s office). We don’t want to see people’s insurance rates going up. That’s why we’re going to be active again. We have three additional cases, working with the IFB and our partners. We’ve got several other cases in the pipeline right now, ready to go,” the chief said.

Romero also noted that a lot of their focus will be going towards stolen cars, which he estimates about 30 percent of are not actually stolen.

Five days after the accident, Alvarez went to a local hospital for her supposed injuries, where she said an employee advised her to file an injury claim because of her involvement in an accident. After citing the video as evidence however, that claims was denied by Travelers.

Alvarez told investigators that she went to a local chiropractor more than 20 times, but admitted that she really didn’t need to go that often.