Police in Bradford are set to be presented with a dossier of documents relating to what a law firm believes are crash for cash accidents with claims running to more than £200,000.

The information included in the file, which is being compiled by law firm Barlow, Lyde and Gilbert (BLG), relates to seven claims arising from three separate car accidents, between May, 2007 and April, 2008.

The dossier has been prepared after BLG, acting for insurance firm Chartis Insurance UK Ltd, secured a £20,000 pay out from Firisat Saleem, of Chelmsford Road, Bradford Moor, and Mohammed Usman, of Courtenay Close, Thornbury, after a staged accident in Bradford on April 14, 2008.

At the time Usman was director of claims management company U&R Injury Claim Specialists Ltd.

Saleem and Usman had claimed they were involved in an accident at a pedestrian crossing.

Saleem had said his vehicle was hit from behind by a hire car driven by Usman, in which his wife was a passenger.

Usman admitted liability for the accident and his wife separately filed a claim against her husband for damages for personal injury she allegedly sustained.

At the trial, at Bradford County Court in December last year, Recorder Christopher Storey QC concluded Usman had schemed with his wife and Saleem to create a staged accident as part of an effort to defraud Chartis.

He said he found Usman’s evidence “wholly unconvincing”, and found that he had hired the car “for the purposes of staging a collision so as to bring fraudulent claims for damages”.

In the judgement, he states of Saleem “despite his apparent good character, he was part of an agreement to stage this accident with the intention of bringing fraudulent claims”.

David Miller, head of claims at Chartis UK, said. “This judgement is a salutary lesson to those who think insurance companies are an easy target.

“Just as fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the ways they try to defraud insurers, so the companies themselves and the specialist lawyers they engage are rising to the challenge and pursuing suspect claims all the way to court.”

Damian Ward, head of fraud at BLG, described the staged accident as a “cynical attempt to defraud insurers”.

He added: “The great thing about this case is the insurance company has been given the costs awarded in their favour. They would have spent other policy holders’ money paying out on the claim. The average premium is going up because of the cost of fraud.”

Last September, Bradford was ranked the fifth worst place in the country for crash for cash incidents, by the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB).

Director of the IFB, Glen Marr, said: “Undetected general insurance claims fraud is estimated to cost the industry £1.9bn a year and that adds an average £44 to every policyholder’s annual insurance premium.

“The message is loud and clear – seek to defraud an insurer and you risk serious repercussions, to include prosecution and seizure of assets.”

  • Read the full story in Wednesday's T&A