Benjamin Wilby was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court on Monday this week after he was found guilty of submitting over 100 claims in nine different names between December 2018 and September 2019.
An insurance company initially looked into four policies which had an unusual pattern of claims and discovered that all were located in the Yorkshire area, believing there to be one individual behind these policies. During their investigation, the insurer uncovered 54 claims linked to these policies.
The insurance company contacted the ten medical professionals that were listed on the claims to ask about the treatments they had supposedly provided. The providers confirmed that they had not administered these treatments and that the receipts given by the policyholders were fake.
The insurer then referred the case to IFED for further investigation which led to Wilby's arrest in September 2019.
Whilst executing a search warrant on a property, officers found various pieces of evidence indicating that Wilby had orchestrated 134 fraudulent claims with the insurer and found additional evidence suggesting that Wilby had submitted similar claims with two other insurance companies.
During an interview with IFED officers, Wilby admitted that he previously had health insurance with one of the providers through a former employer, and therefore knew how the cover worked. He took out four policies in different names for the purpose of committing fraud, using computers both at home and in his local library to forge receipts and take logos from the internet.
Wilby also confessed that he used his grandmother’s bank account details to receive the payments from the claims. He had opened bank accounts in her name, which he controlled without her being aware of their existence.
Detective Constable Surinder Ram, from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, said: “Although each claim made by Wilby was relatively low in value, the large volume of bogus claims he submitted totalled a whopping £24,000. As well as this, he inflicted further loss on the three insurance companies he targeted due to the hours that went into their teams looking into these claims.
“The outcome of this case shows that fraud will not be tolerated at any level. IFED and the industry will continue to work together to ensure that fraudsters are stopped and brought to justice.”
