When you’ve just survived an accident, you wouldn’t be able to think straight for a while, with all that adrenaline and base instincts taking over. Everything feels like a blur once you step out of your car, and you might not be able to remember a thing depending on the accident’s severity. This is where the beauty of technology comes in, as dash cams can record things far better than our panicking brains, and we can use this technology to help provide solid evidence instead of just listening to hearsay.
However, this can still be exploited in more ways than one. This couple in America has found a way to exploit their insurance payouts for some easy cash by faking accidents and pinning the blame on their victims. These repeat offenders have finally been caught. How, you may ask? Simple – the perpetrators uploaded their dash cam footage to their YouTube channel for some clout.
Yup, you read the title of this correctly. It’s a little weird and almost impossible to believe, but it is a thing. But, in all seriousness, it stinks when you get into a car accident because, firstly, you’ve just wrecked your car, and secondly, you need to go through the tedious process of sorting out your insurance. Sure, your insurance can help you in a pinch, but some see their insurance as more than that.
Though dangerous, the plan has some merit. The couple intentionally staged these accidents, shifting the blame to the victims and then citing road rage as the main cause of the accident. What is dubious, however, is the sheer amount of claims and the frequency with which they were made. Though foul play was suspected, making a claim based on an “isolated” case was very difficult. Thankfully, the couple was generous enough to provide more evidence against themselves as they uploaded the rest of their dashcam footage on YouTube – but the videos and channel in question have since been taken down.
After further investigation, over the hundreds of videos on their channel, there have been 23 collisions and 17 insurance claims filed. To make matters worse, they had their child in the car on several occasions. They have since been charged with assault with a deadly weapon (because a vehicle is considered a deadly weapon), felony insurance fraud, child endangerment, and other crimes.
The husband was sentenced to three years in state prison, and the wife was sentenced to 90 days in weekend county jail or work release, three years of supervised probation, and a 52-week child abuse prevention programme.
Source: KTLA5 [1], [2], New York Post
