Calvin Jones set a Detroit office building on fire for an insurance payday. The structure collapsed onto firefighters caught inside. Seven were seriously injured, including one who was paralyzed.

It’s best to don hazmat suits before reading about the eight extreme schemers like Jones who were elected to the Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame.

The Hall of Shame annually dishonors the year’s most brazen, vicious or plain klutzy convicted insurance criminals. These are the year’s barons of bleak.

Their induction into the No-Class of 2012 puts a human face on this supposedly victimless crime. It helps brand insurance fraud as a costly and socially deviant offense by detailing true-life cases — and the damage these masters of disaster cause.

All were convicted or had other legal closure in the last year.

Read the full Profiles of Discourage at the online cellblock — but buy smelling salts and avoid heavy meals before visiting. Here are several hints of things to come…

Crooks fingered. Two cohorts sliced off a mentally disabled man’s hand with a tree-trimming saw to collect more than $670,000 in insurance money. Porky Weaver trusted one cohort like a father figure, who exploited that friendship in a crime that Porky only dimly understood.

Airbag con deflated. Dai Zhensong tried to flood the U.S. with useless knockoff Chinese airbags from his base in Chattanooga, Tenn. He thus exposed innocent motorists to potential death or injury during crashes. Several of his airbags spewed flames and shrapnel at crash dummies in federal tests after Zhensong was busted. Crooked body shops and others typically install such knockoffs but charge insurers full price.

X-rated park romp. Modupe Adunni Martin said she had a bad ankle injury and started collecting workers comp money. But surveillance caught her strolling out of the doctor’s office without crutches. Then she ran to a public park — in high heals — to meet her boyfriend, and gave him oral sex in a position that was medically impossible with her supposed injury.

About the author: Jim Quiggle is director of communications for the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

The year: 1993

The setting: Insurers and consumer leaders gathered in a conference room to hammer out a new anti-fraud group, still waiting for a name.

The need: Insurers and consumer groups may not always see eye to eye about a range of issues. But insurance fraud cheated insurers and consumers alike — and raised premiums around the U.S. It made sense to join forces against this crime.

What happened next: The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud was founded as the nation’s only insurance anti-fraud group whose members include insurers, consumer leaders and government agencies.

It’s a unique role, a unifying role that adds credibility to America’s fraud fight.

It was an unusual and far-sighted idea in 1993, and risky. Could the founders pull it off?

In 2013, the Coalition is celebrating its 20th anniversary of impact. Successful fraudsters steal insurance money with urgency and purpose. The Coalition has pursued this crime with the same urgency and purpose for two decades.

The Coalition’s work has rested atop three pillars: Legislation, public outreach and research. The focus is on all forms and all lines of insurance fraud, though in the early years the emphasis was on property-casualty fraud.

Just one example: Passing state laws tightening the noose around shady medical clinics, staged-crash gangs and contractors has been a large target of our legislative operations. Numerous laws have gone onto the books since the Coalition began working with statehouses.

But fraud is rife everywhere. So as a unifying force, the Coalition has expanded deeper into health and other forms of insurance. The Coalition’s insights and credibility have opened numerous doors to collaboration with all levels of government.

The same cheaters, for instance, are robbing insurers with false medical claims in all lines of medical insurance, for instance. Co-founding and growing a formal partnership for government and private insurers to combat medical swindlers is just one key Coalition initiative underway.

And alerting consumers about fake health plans is a public-outreach priority. A Coalition media push helped spur a U.S. Senate investigation and GAO report.

This is a tall order. It’s cooking up a full plate that’s only getting fuller.

It’s also an energizing order. If you want to get something done then find the busiest person around, the maxim goes.

But large challenges abound. Leaner budgets are hampering more government anti-fraud agencies — most fraudsters have no such budget limits. Too many consumers also are indifferent that fraud is a personal threat. Organized crime is digging deeper into insurance as well.

But that leaves much more to achieve.

About the author: Jim Quiggle is director of communications for the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

There’s a question about whether well-aimed doses of public outreach can persuade people that insurance fraud is a dead-end street.

We have little to go on, because almost nobody applies true science. First you need enough juice ― the money to launch a steady blitz of TV ads, radio spots and other tactics. Then you test your messages and commercials before they’re launched. Will people think the spots effectively gnaw at your sense of right and wrong? Next you measure if people’s attitudes have shifted after the campaign is over. Researchers swing back into action, polling consumers about the ads.

It’s a tall order, but that’s how you know if you moved the needle.

One state agency uses just this science. The promising result: Public outreach can make people decide they don’t want to commit fraud. Look to the Pennsylvania Insurance Fraud Prevention Agency (IFPA) for a glimpse at what’s possible.

IFPA recently finished an 18-month outreach campaign. The effort was aimed at everyday people who commit smalltime scams that add up to bigtime dollars. The commercials avoided bully pulpits and preaching against fraud. They took a subtle but hard-nosed approach called Know the Risks ― Know the Penalties. Several spots simply showed average people who did a dumb thing, got caught and paid a price they came to regret.

One woman, for example, lost a job she was applying for. The spot was called Permanent Record. The effort built on an earlier campaign. In one emotional spot, an angry kid called his busted father a liar.

The agency carefully measured the latest campaign results. More people realized fraud was a felony and one of the most serious crimes. So far so good.

But another telling stat showed up. People who said they’d likely commit fraud decreased two percent. That seems like a small number, but generalize that sample to the whole state: 160,000 Pennsylvanians aren’t likely to inflate or invent a claim.

How many millions of insurance dollars not stolen could that add up to? How many lives and families could be spared wreckage and ruin because of one stupid act? IFPA’s campaigns, cumulatively, are building results. Most state agencies can’t afford the kind of money IFPA spends, nor do results in one state necessarily speak for everyone else. But there’s some promise, here.

Public outreach, if done right, could be a profitable investment and steer people down the right path of life. Insurers and government budget directors, take note.

The Philadelphia area has its share of ethically challenged folks and surely doesn’t need anyone giving step-by-step instructions on how to commit insurance fraud . . . especially when that someone has a large megaphone and can reach thousands of people. That’s the scenario that played out last week on WYSP radio with talk show host (and former tv child star) Danny Bonaduce.

A caller sought advice on how to profit from a minor traffic accident and talker Bonaduce didn’t disappoint. Here’s a partial transcript:

Bonaduce: “Do you have any tingling or numbness in your foot?”
Caller: “[In] my knee.”
Bonaduce: “How about in the bottom or sole of your foot”
Caller: Nah.
Bonaduce: “Yes, you do. Let me ask you again. Do you have any numbness in the bottom of your foot?
Caller: Absolutely!
Bonaduce: “OK . . . So here’s what going to happen when you go to the hospital . . .”

The talk show host then goes into detail about how to fool the doctor into concluding the accident victim suffered nerve damage in his foot. Bonaduce admitted that the scam is illegal, and even boasted employing it himself in a workers comp claim that allowed him to sit home and collect for six months.

Bonaduce’s audience likely includes young and impressionable listeners who look up to this ‘shock jock.’ They now have another reason to think insurance fraud is cool, harmless and lucrative. His behavior is irresponsible.

The Coalition has filed a complaint with Bonaduce’s employer, WYSP, and its parent company, CBS Radio. Feel free to express your own outrage.

An audio clip of the show can be heard in the members-only section of the Coalition’s website (under Other Resources). We’re hesitant to upload it for public consumption and give it more play than it already has.

Thanks to the Pennsylvania Insurance Fraud Prevention Authority for alerting us to this story.

You file a phony burglary claim with your insurer and after they balk about paying, where do you turn for help? Well, the Internet, of course. That’s what this poster did this morning:

It’s interesting that it was posted on the blog “Fraud Protection & Detection,” so it’s not surprising most replies were less than helpful:

• “I hope they prosecute you…”

• “Let me get this straight. You are asking on a public forum how to commit fraud without it looking like you are attempting fraud? I hope they catch you.”

• “Definite Rhodes Scholar material here…”

I am looking for a way to fake out my insurance company and make it look like i really have the items i dont have my appartment was “broken into.” I filled out police report but the insurance company says that i need prooof of ownership of the items that i claimed how do i do this seeing as how i never owned them?

• “…You’re one of those horrible people that screw up good things for the rest of us.”

• “You will get in trouble for 2 things – filing a false report with the police – which, if you filed it already, you can’t ‘take it back’ & insurance fraud. Hope they send you to jail & throw away the key.”

• “I hope you like prison orange because insurance fraud is a felony.”

and my favorite:

• “You’re the reason everybody complains about their insurance premiums always increasing. I hope they catch you, you have to spend some quality time with “Bubba”, and end up having to sit on a donut the rest of your life. JACK ASS!!!”

The Coalition monitors blogs, Twitter, Facebook, chat rooms, bulletin boards and wherever people in cyberspace discuss insurance fraud. Some of the information shared is helping to spread scams that likely won’t get detected. That’s disturbing. But more and more, people — like the ones above —are voicing their opposition to committing fraud in the strongest terms. And that’s encouraging.