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Agencies & People

Estate agent avoids jail following sickness insurance fraud

Blackpool estate agent Adam Reason received payments totalling £24,000 despite having three other jobs.

Nigel Lewis

fraudster estate agent

A fraudster estate agent in Lancashire has escaped prison after being given a suspended jail sentence for scamming his insurer out of £25,000.

Forty-year-old Adam Reason was working at a leading multi-agency NW regional Countrywide brand in a suburb of Blackpool when he contacted his insurer Aviva in 2016 to claim against his sickness insurance policy, saying that he was too ill to continue working, largely because he was unable to drive his car even short distances without difficulties.

Aviva assessed his conditions and accepted the claim, but told Reason that he would have to complete regular reviews to prove he had not been working and was not receiving any other benefits.

But the insurer also completed subsequent background checks after it began paying Reason £2,000 a month.

These discovered that over a two-year period he had continued working as both a music teacher, a wedding photographer and a commercial property snapper, including one day during which he travelled 275 miles to complete a job.

Reason also received £100 a gig to play guitar in a local band, investigators discovered.

After being found out, the former estate agent was reported to the police, who told a court hearing last week that Aviva’s exposure to the former estate agent’s fraud was £648,000 if he had continued claiming the cash until the policy expired.

The most recent data from the Association of British Insurers shows that in 2019 some 107,000 fraudulent insurance claims worth £1.2 billion were uncovered by insurers. That is a new scam uncovered every five minutes or 300 a day.

Read more about Aviva.

February 22, 2021

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