In Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company v (1) Samina Bashir (2) Faisal Rauf (3) Kaneez Akhtar (4) Mohammed Bashir (5) Kamran Khan, the High Court commended the diligence of the Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company in investigating and pursuing a case of insurance fraud, which recently resulted in custodial sentences for two of the accused.

Four defendants (proceedings against the fifth were discontinued) admitted colluding to defraud the insurer by filing a false insurance claim for a motor accident which had not taken place. The sum in question, less than £15,000, was not considered by the judge to be large, and he accepted that the defendants had acted simply as “foot soldiers” in the scheme. However, noting the serious nature of insurance fraud which, in total, costs the industry £2 billion a year and adds on average £44 to every UK policyholder’s bill, the judge imposed a custodial sentence of six weeks on the first and second defendants as a deterrent to others.