It should come as no surprise that Hollywood has not made many movies about insurance—arguably amon
g the least glamorous of industries. However, there are three insurance-themed films worth watching. Two f
om the 1940s film noir era are Double Indemnity and The Killers, both of which portray insurance claims investiga
tors in a positive light. The Fortune Cookie, a 19
60s comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, is about opportunistic fraud. After Lemmon’s charac
ter is injured in an accident, his attorney brother
-in-law Matthau has him feign paralysis to scam the insurance company for a large payout.
Whereas the plot of The Fortune Cookie may sound implausible, the reality is that insurance fraud is ramp
ant. Fake and inflated claims are responsible for over $300 billion in claims leakage annually. Staged accidents
are among the most grisly types of insurance fraud. Here, organized criminal rings comprising complicit attorney
s, medical providers, and actors fake serious road injuries to extract inflated medical reimbursements
and proceeds from insurers in civil litigation. Some such schem
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es have generated tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.
One recent example is so macabre that it should be made into a movie. Cornelius Garrison was a member of a Louisiana criminal gang actively perpetratin
g phony injuries in staged accidents. Garrison was a “slammer
” in staged automobile “accidents”—a driver who intentionally crashes into other vehicles (preferably 18-wheelers) in order to fraudulently collect insurance se
ttlements. Some have estimated that Garrison participated in
close to 100 staged accident scams. But after fellow gang members learned Garrison had turned witness f
or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), his life was in danger. Co-conspirators offered to pay him to move to the B
ahamas to escape retribution; however, Garrison chose to stay home, where he was murdered in a 10-bullet fusillade.
Staged accident fraud is a growing profit center for criminals. In R Street’s 2023 expert witness testimony to Congress on the seamy side of third-party litigation fun
ding, we cited New York’s $31 million staged accident fraud ring, orchestrated by litigation funder Adrian Alexander. The largest scheme known at the time, it ensnared complicit attorneys and corrupt me
dical providers known as “medical mills,” engaging in artificial medical bill inflation and upcoding (the submission of claims containing codes for expensive medical services never rendered). Since then, another massive staged accident ring twice the size of Alexander’s has come to light: a $60 million racket that allegedly bribed 911 emergency line operators to direct callers to medical providers controlled by Bradley Pierre, the mastermind behind it.
The insurance industry loses billions annually to fraudulent claims. The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud has estimated the cost of U.S. insurance fraud at $309 billion per year (including scams related to property and casualty as well as life and health insurance). Property and casualty insurance fraud accounts for approximately $45 billion, with automobile insurance fraud as a major component; in fact, the FBI estimates that staged accidents are responsible for approximately $20 billion in illegal claims.