Insurance Fraud - France
A hotel owner submitted an insurance claim for €3m following a devastating fire, which had caused substantial damage to his hotel business.
Case Study
The owner submitted a buildings, contents and business interruption claim on his insurance policy setting out the damage caused, the cost of repairs and his assessment of how much business the hotel had lost as the result of the fire.
The insurance company quickly established that the damage to the hotel was in line with the claim and that repairs had been carried by the Insured to a reasonable standard. The insurer was about to settle the claim, when it had an anonymous tip off that the Insured had made fraudulent insurance claims in connection with another property and it decided look into the claim.
Our investigation soon established that some of the invoices submitted by the Insured in support of his claim appeared to be fabricated and the suppliers involved could not be traced. Other invoices appeared genuine but were grossly inflated. Unfortunately, the suppliers of these services could not be located and were thought to be out of the country. Significantly, the Insured could not provide any evidence that any of the invoices submitted in support of his claim had actually been paid.
The insurance company decided to decline the claim and prepared a file for the Police.