No win, no fee claim news
08/11/2010

Sentence for passenger injury fraud

A man from Newcastle who made "ghost" passenger injury claims has been sentenced to 300 hours community service and ordered to pay £1,500 in compensation to a car insurance company after being convicted of no win, no fee fraud.

The 34-year-old defendant, described as an "educated man" by the judge hearing the case, made thousands of pounds from his passenger injury claim fraud. The court heard that he would even go to such lengths as hiring people to impersonate car crash victims in order to be able to proceed with litigation.

The prosecuting solicitor said, "In relation to these accidents it's accepted by the defendant that he made personal injury claims in relation to alleged passengers in the vehicles.

"The names he gave were relatives who were in fact never in the vehicles. As a consequence of those claims, a total of £10,700 was paid to the defendant, most of which he was not entitled to."

The defendant faced, and was convicted, of fraud charges relating to three separate car accidents. He had made passenger injury claims for a number of injuries, including whiplash, all of which were completely made up.

However, the judge hearing the case did comment that the man had expressed genuine remorse. He also noted that the defendant had "lost his good reputation".