The NYPD is investigating the disturbing staged accident on the Belt Parkway that went viral on TikTok — as experts said such insurance scams are on the rise in New York because fraudsters are “getting away with it.”
A police spokesperson said Tuesday that detectives interviewed victim Ashpia Natasha about the Oct. 16 dashcam crash in which another driver backed into her front bumper on the busy freeway in Queens just before several passengers fled outside and tried to claim they hurt.
“The investigation continues to be conducted by the Fraudulent Collision Investigation Squad of the NYPD Criminal Enterprise Investigation Unit,” a department spokesperson said in a brief statement.
Unfortunately, cases like Natasha’s are becoming increasingly common as brazen crooks look for scams to prey on unsuspecting victims – even old-fashioned schemes like cutting someone off, slamming on the brakes and then pressuring them for insurance money.
“It’s an ongoing trend and the fraudsters are getting away with it,” Mark Friedlander, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a nonprofit trade group, told The Post on Tuesday.
“They can benefit from these schemes, and until they are caught and put behind bars, the schemes will not slow down.”
Friedlander said staged accidents like the one on the Belt Parkway cost insurers about $20 billion each year — and raise rates for everyone else.
They are most common in high-traffic areas such as California, which saw 5,366 staged crashes in 2023, and New York, which came in second last year with 1,729 such “accidents,” he said.
Those numbers are rising, especially in the New York metro area: The Empire State saw a 14% increase from 2022 to 2023, Friedlander said, while New Jersey saw a 58% increase, from 158 in 2022 to 250 in 2023.
More often than not, two cars will be involved — one in front of the victim and one in the back — and they will wedge their unsuspecting mark between them, Friedlander said.
Then the conspiracy rings will bring in medical professionals willing to amplify the severity of the ‘injuries’ even further, while lawyers on the spot will sue the victim driver on their behalf.
“It’s not just the people who cause the fraudulent accidents,” Friedlander said. “It’s a much broader problem than just a few people in a vehicle causing this. It’s really great.”
And they are failing innocent victims – like Natasha, whose incident was a “perfect example of an attempted insurance fraud that played out in real time,” according to a representative of the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
The Belt Parkway seems to attract these crooks – another eerily similar incident recently happened on the same road, although it’s not clear when. This is evident from a video posted on Reddit two days ago.
In that clip, another silver Honda races alongside someone driving in the right lane, cuts him off and predictably slams on the brakes.
The victim bumped into the scammers, who then got out of the car, walking slowly and holding their necks as they walked around.
It is not clear how the incident ended or whether police believe the two crashes were committed by the same crew.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
But there are some ways drivers can protect themselves from becoming the next victim, including being a defensive driver (sometimes impossible in New York) and installing a dashcam like the one Natasha used to catch her would-be scammers.
She was driving on the three-lane parkway Wednesday morning when the crew — driving a silver Honda Accord — suddenly changed lanes, cut her off and hit the brakes, according to a video she later captured. posted on TikTok.
She also hit the brakes and narrowly avoided a collision.
At that point, the other driver stopped in the shoulderless lane, hit the hazards and backed into her.
Then four people got out of the Honda and pretended to be injured while inspecting the damage. A red Kia stopped, picked up the suspected driver and took off.
But the dark crew fell victim to a bit of street justice – a video posted to Reddit on Wednesday morning showed some angry vigilantes in Brooklyn catching up to them before the cops did and taking out their frustrations on their Honda.
The vandals wrote “Fraud” on a piece of cardboard, stuck it in the windshield and shattered the driver’s side windows, the video showed.
They also wrote “Rats” on another piece of cardboard and stuck it in the back window – a clear sign that the Bensonhurst neighborhood is wise in their plans.
Tom Burke, a retired NYPD detective who specialized in car crime, said that means he was the ringleader.
“He’s the kingpin — he’s the guy who recruited these other idiots to fall victim to his scam,” said Burke, who is also an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan and a board member of the New York Times. York Anti-Car Theft & Fraud Association.
“That’s why he’s leaving the scene,” he continued. ‘He’s the main man, he’s the one who makes the money. The other people are just idiots. You can’t make things like this up.’
If there had been no dashcam recording, the rest might have gone exactly as Friedlander suspected.
“Those people will go ahead,” Burke said of the passengers.
“They might get paid a few hundred dollars… and if they all complain that they have physical injuries, they go to a quack doctor who recommends physical therapy and so on, and for that money they go to the insurance company. .”
Burke added that this racket – which the National Insurance Crime Bureau calls a “swoop and squat” – is more common in the countries of the old Eastern Bloc.
But American crooks have picked it up.
“There’s stuff traveling back and forth,” Burke said. “And people always copy a scam that works.”
“And they will do that until they get locked up – and then they will do another one,” he continued.
“These kinds of things have been happening for centuries.”
