Motorists unable to afford payments on pricey cars and gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles in this recession are turning to a time-tested financing solution: matches.
Insurance cheats are torching their vehicles in remote deserts. They’re pushing them off cliffs. They’re sinking them in lakes or ditching them in Mexico in the hopes of getting their policies to pay off, fraud investigators say.
Nationwide, suspicious vehicle fires or arson increased 27 percent in the first quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. So-called owner give-ups — cars intentionally destroyed or abandoned — jumped 24 percent.
Barbecuing a Beamer is not the only insurance fraud on the rise. Suspicious personal-injury slip-and-fall claims increased 60 percent in the first quarter; staged car-accident cases were up 34 percent; and commercial-property fire and arson cases jumped 76 percent.
