A family insurance fraud ring that deliberately caused traffic accidents targeting vehicles changing lanes in Seoul and the capital region and collected about 120 million won in insurance payouts has been caught by police.
Goyang Police Station in Gyeonggi said on the 14th that it had sent a couple in their 40s and a mother-in-law in her 60s to prosecutors without detention on charges of violating the Special Act on the Prevention of Insurance Fraud and violating the Child Welfare Act (child abuse).
They are accused of staging 22 deliberate crashes from May 5, 2020, to June 4 last year in Goyang and Hanam, Gyeonggi, and across Seoul to defraud insurers of about 120 million won.
The suspects drove three vehicles provided by the mother-in-law with their three minor children on board and caused crashes by intentionally ramming cars that were changing lanes.
The investigation began with a tip from an insurer, but the police probe struggled because of a lack of objective materials and because the suspects flatly denied the crimes.
Police asked the National Forensic Service and the Korea Road Traffic Authority for engineering analyses of dashcam footage and selected scenes with a high possibility of deliberate crashes.
The analysis showed repeated patterns with similar types of crashes and locations, such as colliding with vehicles that had left their lanes while making left turns. Some also had accidents at least every 10 days in succession. Police also found indications that the vehicles were scrapped three times to make it harder to track accident histories.
The suspects received insurance payouts by exaggerating damages, such as not repairing the vehicles and claiming unperformed repair costs, or having all occupants hospitalized even for minor accidents, it was found.
In some crashes, there were indications they inflated the degree of injury to be hospitalized for long periods or demanded personal settlement money. Police said they also secured indications of how the insurance money was distributed by analyzing the suspects' bank transactions.
Considering that the couple exposed their three minor children to physical danger by carrying them and involving them in deliberate crashes, police added charges of violating the Child Welfare Act (child abuse).