Man jailed 10 months for motor insurance scam
by admin on Aug.26, 2010, under Car insurance
A MAN who masterminded a conspiracy to cheat an insurer into making a payout for an accident was sentenced to 10 months’ jail yesterday.
Hamzah Karim, 44 and self-employed, had talked Liyana Mohamed Noor, 23, into making a false police report about an accident that never took place, to cheat Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance into making the payout.
He also offered her $100 to lodge the false report.
Hamzah, who had no lawyer, was given leave by District Judge Kessler Soh to defer his jail term to Sept 13 to settle family matters and celebrate Hari Raya first.
Liyana pleaded guilty in April and was jailed five months for her role in the scam. The court heard that she had been in a minor accident in July 2006 while learning to ride a motorbike with a driving school and was hospitalised.
She met Hamzah while still in Changi General Hospital. Knowing she had no grounds to claim monetary compensation for her minor mishap, Hamzah told her he could help get her some money if she would call him after she was discharged.
When they subsequently met, Hamzah brought along his friend Abdul Rafiq Reduan and instructed the pair to make a false traffic accident report. This was the account they were to cook up for the report – that Liyana was riding pillion on a motorbike ridden by her ‘boyfriend’ when a taxi cut into their lane, sending them skidding in Bedok North Avenue 3.
But Mr Rafiq changed his mind about being part of this plan.
Liyana stuck with it and filed the false report, but when the insurance company started its investigations into the case, she came clean about her lie in a bid to make a claim for $6,000.
Earlier, Deputy Public Prosecutor Chay Yuen Fatt argued that the insurance industry was premised on trust and frank disclosure by all involved parties, so the lodging of false claims undermined and betrayed the system.
Hamzah has previous convictions for theft in the mid-1980s.
Source:
