By Yoon Ja-young
Staff Reporter
It all began when he was in high school, said the 22-year-old male, identified only as a Han, who was caught by police after years of insurance frauds.
He colluded with 10 friends who looked for cars that crossed over the center line and crashed into them on purpose. They received 6 million won insurance money on the first try.
The easily earned money made them collude on five more cases, which brought them 20 million won. They squandered the money on entertainment.
Such insurance fraud soared by nearly 30 percent last year amid the economic downturn, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) Wednesday.
The regulator said that the insurance swindles caught by itself and police last year were valued at 330.5 billion won, up 29.7 percent from the previous year. The number of people involved in the scams was 54,268, up 32.3 percent from 2008.
"Insurance fraud by people with unstable income such as the jobless or part-time workers soared due to the downturn," an FSS spokesman said. Insurance swindles by such people more than doubled from the previous year, and the strengthening of the investigations also caught more illegalities than before.
Fabricating accidents accounted for 29 percent of the cases, while causing accidents on purpose recorded 23.4 percent.
Most of the cases (67.7 percent) were auto insurance claims. They involved 46,370 people, or 85.4 percent of the total.
Statistics showed that young people, teenagers or those in their 20s, were increasingly involved in the crimes. The number grew by 39.8 percent, totaling 13,032 in 2008. Four out of five were men.
"Koreans are too lenient in such instances. When there is a car accident, people here recommend that you go and be hospitalized regardless of whether you are hurt or not," said a representative at a non-life insurance company.
Even some doctors were involved in the dishonest acts. According to the regulator, six doctors who specialize in traffic accident victims lied to insurers on how long they treated the victims. They filed for fees even after the patients left the hospital. They raked in 500 million won in undue income in this way.