Jacob Stone got away with insurance fraud for more than 20 years
before he began consulting to business owners on how to avoid
personal injury scams. After "A Current Affair" aired his
story, however, he was charged with insurance fraud and sentenced
to four years in prison. He's now living in a halfway house and
has co-written a book with Graham Mott called Insider Secrets
onBusiness Liability Fraud (Golden Shadows Press).
Raised in a fourth-generation carnival family, Stone says he was
born to hustle. "We were taught to spot the easiest, most
vulnerable victims," he says. For personal injury scams, that
meant grocery stores, convenience stores, fast-food restaurants,
pet shops and theaters because they have high customer traffic and
young employees who know little about insurance fraud.
Personal injury scams fall into four basic types:
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1. Slip and fall. The "customer" stages a fall
on a slippery substance spilled on the floor or in the parking lot.
It's typically something that would normally be found on the
premises: ketchup at a fast-food restaurant, cleaning supplies in a
public restroom, produce dropped on the floor in a grocery store.
Some con artists find a spill; others create one.
2. Trip and fall. Con artists often visit stores in
search of accidents waiting to happen: an electrical cord stretched
across an aisle, a loose weatherstrip, an obstructed sidewalk or
merchandise left in the aisle. Then they trip, fall and claim an
injury. "Professional hustlers are like professional
actors," Stone says. "They know how to stage a fall so
well no one can tell the difference."
3. Yank down. In this scam, the hustler finds a top-heavy
stack of soda cartons, bags of pet food or other unwieldy
merchandise, then pulls it down on top of himself. "It looks
legitimate," says Stone, who contends that a professional
hustler is as skilled as a stunt man at not getting hurt.
4. Chew and sue. At a restaurant, the schemer will put a
shard of glass in a salad or a chicken bone in the soup, then claim
to have been injured trying to eat it.
To collect on an insurance claim, the hustler has to have
medical documentation of the "injury." Some stick to
"internal head injuries" or "sciatic nerve
damage," knowing what symptoms to claim and how to move to
convince a doctor they're hurt. Others use a syringe to squirt
blood up their "broken nose." If they have an old nose
injury, they can convince a doctor the damage was caused by this
accident, get scheduled for reconstructive surgery and file a claim
for $30,000.
Scam artists use fake names and addresses, says Jerry Dolan, a
special agent for the NICB. When they call the insurance company to
ask about their claim, they say they've moved; the phone's
not connected yet. Often the insurance company is willing to settle
the claim quickly.
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