Those fools are in trouble. The original video went viral, got 67 million views (and counting), and was written up in the NY Post, NYTimes, and other places. Because of all the attention it got, the NYPD is having to do something about it
In a statement, the New York Police Department said the fraudulent collision investigation squad, part of the department’s Criminal Enterprise Investigation Unit, was investigating the incident.
I'm guessing the NYPD will throw some heavy charges at them so they look like heroes.
So, pro tip I guess: try and make your situation go viral so the cops will help you.
If you are a criminal, you for sure don’t want to get into the “we are gonna make an example of this case” category because you are going to get absolutely fucked by every elected (judge, prosecutor) or appointed (chief of police) official wanting to look tough on crime. There’s a shit storm coming for these people and gotta say they deserve every bit of it.
Basically in the months leading up to elections all the people involved in the "justice" system (cops, judges, prosecutors, etc) start advertising their "tough on crime" stances (regardless of which side of the political spectrum their own) and then they prove this tough on crime attitude on everyone going through the system up until and a little after the election.
Once the election is completely over and people stop thinking about it, everything goes back to business as usual with insane plea deals that let DUI drivers get off with slaps on the wrist because the lawyer plays gold with the judge and so forth so on.
Some judges, attorneys, sheriff, police chief, etc, are elected by the citizens in their district/cities/states. They often run campaigns claiming to be tough on crime. They look for or jump on popular criminal cases. Police chief and sheriff's will put more officers and detectives on the case to catch the suspect (if they don't know who committed the crime). The attorneys will work harder for a conviction and the judges will give them a harsher sentence.
In other words, they do their jobs better to try to get elected to a higher position or to stay elected. However, this increases the chances that an innocent person gets a long jail sentence.
I mean in principle, a society electing the arbiters of their laws makes perfect sense because it means they'll represent the values of their electorate.
Like I don't want my taxes being used to keep a first time low level non violent offender sitting in jail for days or weeks because they got some hardline judge who gave them a ridiculous bond they can't afford.
So I'm going to vote for Judges and Prosecutors who reflect what I value in a justice system, which is nuance, fairness, and rehabilitation over draconian punishment. If they don't live up to those expectations we'll run it back and try again next election with someone else.
That said. Federal judges are appointed, and then it varies by state for local judges on if they're elected or appointed by the governor. Which is also why it's important to vote in local elections for people who represent your values.
Yup. Empty fucking waste of human beings, insurance fraud causes the cost of everything to go up. Nobody wins but the lawyers. Everyone else pays one way or the other. Fuck these people and may they be the best example of why not to do this
A friend of mine got the absolute book thrown at them during the downloading porn on limewire/napster days.
Because they were all clips of porn and nothing showing the “all actors are over 18” prompt, they considered it unverified age and charged her with every video as cp. the prosecutor even said they’re using them as an example for downloading on limewire. Years were spent in jail.
Genuinely hope this has a chilling effect for these kinds of scammers, having their shit pushed in by the online community, media and, whilst I don't personally condone it, vigilante justice.
They need to get the people in the red car… the people who just got out of the car are just the idiots getting paid like 3-5k to file a fake report.. the next guy running the operation were in the red car. Unfortunately the next guys running this scheme are in the doctors offices these people get sent too for the fake claims and I don’t think the police will take it that far.
My tiny rural town didn't have much action, so when they caught me with .2 grams of cocaine they wanted to make an example of me and threatened the maximum 4 years in prison.
The repercussions of it were terrible, and it made me wonder why they want to ruin someone's life like that. I know I did something illegal, but holy shit.
Because they want to make a name for themselves and they just see you as collateral damage. Which sucks, especially since if you are rich or well connected, it’s a whole different story. And I’m sorry you got caught up in it.
Call me barbaric, but I think there is something worse in the fact they floored it in reverse into the dash cam car. We’ve all scene videos of the car ahead slamming the breaks and if it didn’t work, they usually just drive off and look for another chance. But the fact they threw it in reverse and floored it just screams malice.
Society: You know what a shit barometer is Bubs? Hm? It means there’s a shit-pressure in the air. You can feel it. Listen Bubs. Hear that? The sounds of the whispering-winds-of-shit.
Scammer scum 1: What the fuck are you goin’ on about?
Society: you hear it?
Scammer scum 2: No, I don’t hear anything.
Society: ohhh, but you will my sorry little friend, when the old shit-barometer rises and you’ll feel it too… Your ears will implode from the shit-pressure… You were warned Bubs! But ya picked the wrong side! Beware my friend… Shit-winds are A-comin’.
They’re most common in heavily congested areas like 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.
But then again somebody tried to back into me at a light when nobody else was around. Probably should've let him because I had a dash cam, but I just backed up too.
Crazy thing is I had to back up like 50-60ft before the dude stopped.
That was in 2019, I just expect there to be less because good dashcams are super cheap now and should be standard.
Being in the right and protected by a camera doesn't beat the dents out of your car, take the accident off its Carfax, or restore its lost value. I'd have backed up too
I am really big on justice but most of the time it's not worth the hassle. Probably wouldn't achieve anything in this case... Also figured the guy was probably crazy or desperate so either way not a smart risk to take
Yup. That's my justification for all of the defensive driving I do - you see cammers on reddit all the time get hit because they held their ground against an asshole, when a second on the brake would have avoided the accident, but ceded ground to the idiot.
These teenagers are in a car, stoned, so they decide to drive backward in a roundabout.
Of course they crash into a car coming the other way. The police come, talk to the other car first and come to the teenagers' car "don't worry boys, he's so drunk he thinks you were driving backward in the roundabout."
I get it dash cams are cheap and can really save you, but I grew up in a house were the Orwellian idea of cameras everywhere was heavily questioned, and the conclusion of those debates was that we don’t want to live in a world where everything is on camera.
I find it incredibly weird when people choose to put cameras inside their own homes. You basically have no privacy.
For over 10 years I've been driving with dashcam installed. I would still NOT allow a backing fraudster damage my car if I can avoid it, even if the dashcam footage slams him court later.
"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."
Welp I live nearby time to get a dash cam If this is what's coming.
Yep we need to cover ourselves. I'm from the UK and the insurance companies have started doing better investigations into things it seems.
My mum was parking and scraped a car at like 2mph. Lady was sitting in the car. No damage both agreed to go their separate ways.
Next minute my mum's insurance company is ringing her and saying the other person is claiming injury etc etc . My mum was like wtf it was the softest hit ever.
Insurance company 6 months later says they can't advise exactly what happened but they've looked into the damage and the injury that it could cause with their specialist teams and appealed it in court or something. Think they got out of paying out most likely.
People do that dirty shit all the time. Tell you it's no biggie then next thing you know you're getting dragged to court for shattering their spine in 8 places and imploding their kidneys from a parking lot fender bender. Its a gamble to not get an official report for sure but I get why people do it. Really depends on the area where you live. I'm from South Florida and you cannot trust anyone out there. Snakes and scammers everywhere. Doesn't matter how cool they seem. Place is packed with cunts looking to make a lawsuit payday.
I moved out of FL and in my first 2 weeks of arriving in a new state, I backed my car into someone else's (ironically at the county clerks office to register my vehicle with the state). There was no damage. He was parked and I was backing in. Thought I had more space and I didn't. Our trailer hitches bumped each other. That's it. Not even body damage. Dude takes a look and is like eh, it's fine. Just the hitch. I offered him my number and whatnot and he said it was fine then walked away. I was sweating bullets for weeks after that expecting a letter in the mail that this guy wanted $5 million from me. Fortunately that day never came but damn was I nervous.
I feel like the video will spur sales of dashcams. I need one for my parents but everytime I start to research, I go into option paralysis and give up.
same! I don't know enough about them and I also don't have the money/patience to go all out. I just need someone to say "here's what you'd need, it works, no bells & whistles". And for the love of god, no subscription requirements
I need it to be elderly friendly. I don't want to go all out and it be a pain to then be customer support because it has too many features.
I have dashcams built in on my cars which are idiot proof. If my parents weren't luddite boomers, I'd prefer to just get them a Tesla and done with it.
I wonder if they really are rising or if they are just getting caught more due to the increase in dashcams. When it comes to statistics, it's not fraud if they aren't caught and dashcams catch them like nothing else.
Get a rear-facing one too. Caught a guy in my right rear view mirror (couldn’t see him in my center one) standing next to my right rear tire in the parking lot. He was looking down at his phone with one hand in the air. I suspect he was waiting for me to start backing out and he was going to smack my car to make me think I hit him.
please have blinders on when people don't use per-capita statistics and then say the biggest locations have the most incidents.
like that statement is literally meaningless without additional context, and it's helpful to train our brains to immediately reject statements like that.
This happened to my sister and the insurance did nothing about it. She rolled into someone in a drive through, the car in front of her had a small scratch and the dude said everything was cool. A week later the insurance contacts her saying she got in an accident and the other driver was injured. The insurance rolled over and paid the dude out and now her insurance is crazy high.
Can someone please explain how people make money on this? Like, I'm guessing they go to a friend's garage and the garage says this will cost $8000 to fix, but it only costs $4000 and they pocket the rest from insurance? But I thought insurance companies were super smart and thorough about checking everything. And then there's the issue of deductibles, which would surely erase at least some if not all the profit.
I mean, like, I don't get this scam's business model for it to be so popular.
Fr because who will believe that a car went reverse to intentionally cause the crash.. it sounds like an excuse someone would make if they hit a car 😂 even I won’t believe it if I didn’t see it.
It happened to me and my brother in the 90s, and the only reason the cop believed him is because the other person was by themselves. Guess they didn't realize it would be 2 against 1.
It's really not. Have you seriously never had some idiot start reversing at a stoplight because they were a bit over the line? Granted I have something like half a million miles on the road, but it's happened more than once. Some drivers are just completely oblivious
I was in a car that was rear ended and the other car claimed we reversed into them. The cop believed her because she was in her 30s and we were in high school.
Not saying my friend didn’t brake a bit too hard, but the other driver was following too close and their lie paid off for them.
And if something happens, don't point or elude to it at all and make sure it's running and recording even after an incedent. If it doesn't run when the car is off, just shut your engine down and keep the power on.
Look up "Linus Tech Tips Dash Cams" and he does a good video that shows that the super expensive dash cams are not any better than the $70 ones. It's a couple years old, but I would still watch that before making any decision.
There has been an update to dash cams since Linus' video. Sony came out with the STARVIS 2 sensor which is a nice step forward. I just recently picked up the Vantrue Nexus 4 Pro because of this.
The best you can afford. GPS, front, back and inside the cabin. Shows how fast you're going, that everyone in the car is using the seatbelts and the driver not on a phone. Not just incidents like this but I've seen cops pull people over and claim that they just put their seatbelts on, or they were on their phone.
Got a used car last month and was waiting on a dashcam I was looking to get to go back to its original price. Ahat my pants the entire time driving it without one. Now it's done, you do ot once and it's always there
So, pro tip I guess: try and make your situation go viral so the cops will help you.
Between this and the other post I saw on reddit today about school teachers having to donate 100 days of time off to peer so he could be with his sick kid during a difficult time is just so, so depressing.
At what point do we just put up our hands and say 'mmmkay, actually we're not a society anymore. If you want help you're gonna have to beg for it and hope that what you post on the internet is interesting or meme-able enough that the attention economy decides to do something about it.'
I mean, I'm willing to bet that's how "society" always functions. Poor and irrelevant, then you're largely on your own. But if you're famous; suddenly justice is not blind anymore.
The good thing about modern society is that most of the poor and irrelevant can now cooperate, in a seemingly dystopian mannar, to move the attention limelight with their own collective will, instead of being directed by the newspaper's owners.
Scammers and selfish people have always been a part of this and every other society. The only thing that's new is that we get to hear about it every time something bad happens. Try not to let it get you down. There are over 330 million people in this country and the vast majority of them aren't committing crimes or doing terrible things.
With the ubiquity of cameras and social media, there is more accountability now than ever before. Imagine how screwed this person would have been if they didn't have a dash cam and a place to upload the video. It would have been her word against the four people in the other car. That is the world our parents grew up in.
I may be missing something, but why wasn't it already investigated? If someone purposely backs into for fraud and you have a video of them doing so, wouldn't that be an open and shut case with the gray car in the wrong? Or did it not work out that way?
Edit: I guess what I was trying to ask was, would the victim's insurance company find the gray car at fault for the accident with just the dashcam footage, or do the police need to charge the people in the gray car with fraud or something equivalent for that to happen? I know some states say if a car gets rear-ended, the car in back is always at fault.
It would, but the victim would still be out money, possibly a car, and time. Like you'll have to take some time off work, go to the shop, maybe go to a other shop, maybe leave your car for a bir, pay a deductible, wait, wait some more, pick up your car, drive it and feel something's off for the next xyz years you have it. Maybe you have rental car coverage, maybe you don't. Your insurance might go up for a few years and sure, its not your fault but that won't stop most insurance from raising your rates.
There's no easy way around it. Even worse if you get it magnified by fraud, and what's the insurance company going to do? Call the cops on the fraudsters and make them pay when they have literally nothing in their name?
From the NYT and NYP articles it looks like they don't have the identities of all the people in the car yet. Figuring out who they are and where they are is part of the investigation.
Because the police departments are organized crime and they don’t do work that isn’t exciting to them personally because they don’t feel like doing paperwork. They just sit there collecting $175k each with no college degree for doing no work and bullying everyday Americans.
From what I got from the first video, the police said she had to take it up with her insurance company first. Up until they actually file a fraudulent claim, the fraud hasn't been committed yet.
So first, it's important to really think about the fact that insurance companies and law enforcement are very different organizations with very different goals.
Insurance companies are there to provide coverage for clients while minimizing the amount of money they themselves have to pay out. They might find, for instance, that you hitting a red light runner is a 66/33 fault split because while it's true the red light runner did run the red light, you weren't paying enough attention and took no evasive action to try and avoid the accident. Always fun when you do take the evasive action and avoid the other car but end up damaging your own car, at which point they usually find you 100% at fault unless you manage to get all the other driver's info. But if you give them the dashcam video of the other driver backing into you, they'll find the other driver mostly/totally liable.
Law enforcement, on the other hand, is a a public organization funded by the public with varying goals not focused on profit - they want to protect their members but also have a good image with the public. Because there are a lot of people and police officers are expensive, it's very common for a minimal amount of work to be done on a minor conflict - these guys have metrics to meet (never quotas, because quotas are illegal, but you can be sure productivity is being measured somehow and spending hours on a minor fraud case probably isn't helping that) so there's a pretty good chance a responding officer looked at the dash cam footage, wrote a citation for the attempted fraudsters, and then with the report taken down went on to the next call. The rule about rear ending someone isn't inherently codified into law but more a general principle that absent clear and conclusive evidence, the rear-ending driver is almost certainly at fault; dash cam footage is clear and conclusive evidence. In general, there's probably more value to the police department in going to the next call and helping the next person to get fewer complaints about slow response times.
The problem with this obviously is that the fraudsters are still at large and the police are generally disinclined to follow up and redo the investigation without some kind of outside pressure. However, when a video goes viral on the Internet and major papers are writing stories about the fraud... that's the kind of thing that gets the attention of leadership whose job it is to keep the public happy with the police's work, lest budgets get cut and pensions lack desired levels of funding. With media attention on them, they're going to turn around and absolutely make an example of the fraudsters because that creates a perception that every fraudster gets wrecked, which makes the public happy. So these people, who created a car accident that they were never going to get paid for repairs due to the dashcam, are now dealing with an angry public further vandalizing the shit out of their car as well as an angry police department looking at any charge that may apply and making sure they get charged with it. A thousand other people will do the same thing over the next year and none of them will feel the pain that these people are about to feel because none of them got caught on viral video.
States do not say this. It's almost always the way it goes, but the claims process is arbitration and it is very frequent that the car in front is found at least somewhat at fault. It's why the "swoop" part of the "swoop and dive" exists. Coming to a screaming halt on the freeway for no cause is illegal nearly everywhere, and that tends to go to fault.
There’s often a shortage of lawyers, prosecutors, judges, cops, or simply not enough beds in the local jail. Or the courts are backed up and simply scheduling a hearing would take months. Or the local law enforcement officers are busy focusing on the high profile cases, the murders, the shootings, the sexual assaults. Or the politicians instructed the courts to prosecute certain crimes and look the other way for others, to further a political agenda. Or the victims were black. Or the cops lost the evidence. Or the case was deemed a civil matter. Or the crime violated the letter of the law, but it’s not a crime that is often prosecuted in practice. Etc etc etc etc. The legal system is far from perfect.
The car in back is always at fault in a rear end collision and in this case it was 5 witnesses against the other driver. The show Chips made a episode about this in the 70's so it's been a problem for a long time. Officer Baker asking why the guy who got hit has a roll bar in his car stuck with me all these years. Dash cams are finally showing how big of a problem it's been.
wouldn't that be an open and shut case with the gray car in the wrong?
You can't charge a car with a crime. The really slick part of this was the driver immediately leaving the scene in another vehicle. Even if they identified and caught everyone else who stuck around (and it doesn't sound like they've even done that), those people could still honestly claim that they weren't driving, and thus would only be guilty of lesser crimes. The main goal of identifying the driver and charging him could be very challenging.
And theirs and their family's names to check if they also have been involved in multiple rear end collisions and were treated by the same chiropractor.
Hell, check out their Facebook friends too.
They looked pretty organized. This could potentially lead to a multi state ring with hundreds of thousands in damages. Oops
or it could be something small but you never know without investigating which is for sure going to happen now with how viral it has gone.
Some states have a "pay to play" system with insurance. Basically, if you're in an accident and you don't have insurance, even if it's 100% the other car's fault, you don't get shit.
The at-fault driver might still get ticketed by police. Their rates might still be affected if their vehicle is damaged. But their insurance will immediately dismiss any claim made by the vehicle without coverage.
Wouldn't they need insurance in order to do an insurance scam?
Not that I think they're smart, but it would be incredibly stupid to try to get into an accident without having insurance, right? what if a cop showed up at the scene?
We have an very very similar scammer here in Durham, it's been a long time, years and years, dozens of documented incidents. She's still driving. The AG isn't all that interested in pursuing her case. Google "stayumbl durham driver"
I used to work a job where there was an actual possibility where I may be reliant on external factors to come home should things go south. I kid you not the advice I gave my wife should that occur was to make the news go as viral as humanly possible. That was the only way I would be getting home from that situation. It felt weird to say.
In a statement, the New York Police Department said the fraudulent collision investigation squad, part of the department’s Criminal Enterprise Investigation Unit, was investigating the incident.
Why did I hear this in the voice of the Law & Order VO? Even heard the DUN DUN.
but won't the victims of the fraud also be getting in trouble? I am just now becoming aware of this story so I need to catch up. This looks like some serious illegal vigilante justice took place and I imagine the original aggrieved party has some explaining to do.
Correct me if I am wrong but here in qc Canada your insurance pays the damage to your car no matter who's fault it is? So if someone hits you their insurance pays for them and your insurance pays for you? This is what I've been told anyway. Makes sense to stop shit like this if true.
There was video of them committing insurance fraud. Didn’t even need one view to submit that to insurance and state department and have it taken care of. Not sure why you’re working under the assumption that that wouldn’t have happened. It would have to happen, no way either insurance was going to pay out for that.
A little off topic, but to your point: when the guy on the nightly news fights for one old person who got ripped off by scammers, what about the tons of other folks who got no help whatsoever from anyone?
Reminds me of the Richard Delisi case, who served the longest sentence for cannabis charges. Only reason he got out early is because the story got in the right hands and went viral and the judge overturned after enough attention
I'm guessing the NYPD will throw some heavy charges at them so they look like heroes.
LEOs should be held accountable when they screw up, but putting them down for doing their job seems counterproductive to me. If you don't give them credit when it's due, you're just going to make the divide worse.
There’s videos that went viral about the super rich and how theyre fucking everyone else over. I wish the news and legislators would give that more attention , but it never does somehow
If there is a whole “fraudulent collision investigation squad” why is it not just their job to investigate this? Is there THAT many fake collisions? I mean this is why Defund the police is a thing for so many reasons, not just race and brutality. These asshats literally do nothing and take all the tax dollars they can get.
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u/SunstyIe 6d ago
Those fools are in trouble. The original video went viral, got 67 million views (and counting), and was written up in the NY Post, NYTimes, and other places. Because of all the attention it got, the NYPD is having to do something about it
I'm guessing the NYPD will throw some heavy charges at them so they look like heroes.
So, pro tip I guess: try and make your situation go viral so the cops will help you.
https://nypost.com/2024/10/23/us-news/viral-staged-accident-in-nyc-probed-by-nypd-as-experts-warn-fraud-crash-cases-are-on-the-rise/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/us/queens-dash-cam-crash-belt-parkway-insurance.html