Man who made £75,000 worth of fraudulent travel insurance claims sentenced
Sam William Carr took out 13 travel insurance policies with five insurance companies and made fraudulent claims for lost luggage and money against them
A man who changed his name multiple times by deed poll and used the identities of his family and friends to make fraudulent travel insurance claims worth an estimated total of £75,000 has been sentenced.
Carr pleaded guilty at Inner Crown Court to 10 counts of fraud by false representation, and was sentenced at the Royal Courts of Justice to 20 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years. He must also complete 200 hours of unpaid work and a 30-day rehabilitation activity requirement.
The case was referred to the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED) in February 2020 by LV= General Insurance. On 11 April 2019, Carr, who had taken out a travel insurance policy with LV= under the name Cruise Pierce, claimed that his luggage was lost during a flight to Australia 15 days earlier and £1,000 in cash had been stolen from his hotel room.
Checks made by LV= and its fraud team showed that the luggage could only have been missing for 11 days, and the claims were rejected after Carr did not respond to the insurer’s attempts to contact him.
Further enquiries showed that Carr had used different legal names and aliases, the most prominent being Cruise Archer Pierce and Sebastian Prince Alexander, to make fraudulent claims with Aviva, AXA Partners, Travel Insurance Facilities, and Reactive Claims. He supplied numerous addresses, including those of family members and storage units he rented when he took out the policies.
Carr would either claim for baggage that he stated had gone missing during flights abroad or money stolen from his destination hotel room. He supplied fake banking documents, utility bills and flight boarding passes to evidence the claims. In other instances, he booked the flights, but did not travel. Carr’s activity resulted in him being paid a total of £11,321, as the majority of the claims were not paid out after they were deemed fraudulent.
Carl Mather, Manager, Special Investigations Unit at Aviva, commented: “Aviva remains resolute in its determination to deliver an immediate, effective, and robust response to claims fraud and in so doing safeguard our customers from the pressure it applies on policy premiums.”
In recent news, Allianz Commercial reported having detected £77.4 million worth of claims fraud in 2023.