Think insurance fraud is a victimless crime? Consider the case involving the son of Elsa Moure in Lawrence, Mass. As a six-year-old, this boy was placed in a car by his parents who then proceeded to intentionally crash the vehicle` for insurance money.

He was injured, but not severely. The real damage likely will be the emotional scars he’ll carry well into adulthood in trying to figure how supposedly loving parents could place his well being in jeopardy.

This is the sickening side of insurance fraud, a trend where scams become more daring and destructive. Moure’s not the first mother to use her kid as a crash-test dummy. Just yesterday, a Virginia woman who packed her car with her kids was convicted of being a serial crasher over a two-year period. She allegedly coached her kids on how to act injured when police arrived on the scene.

Staged crashers think that insurers are more likely to pay a claim if a child is injured. Or in the case of crooked surgeons, they think their claims will get by if they actually cut open a patient for a needless operation rather than just submit a phony bill.

Elsa Moure was sentenced yesterday to three-years’ probation and ordered to pay back the $60,000 she and the boy’s father stole in insurance money.

An argument can be made that she deserved prison. In my book, she forfeited her right to be a mother.

To all enterprising Texans looking to make $300 for ten minutes work, meet Carlos Campos, entrepreneur and operator of the
Texas Marketing Group. If you can talk an accident victim into talking with Carlos — and that conversation results in at least five treatments at a local client, then you get the 300 bucks.

Carlos is an aggressive, unapologetic marketeer of what he says is a much-needed service of helping innocent accident victims receive medical treatment. He gathers auto accident reports from the local police and uses that information for his telemarketers to contact and convince accidents victims to seek treatment.

He says he never pressures anyone he calls, and that maybe only one out of ten is receptive to the idea. And he’s adamant that he would never encourage anyone to commit insurance fraud, although he admits some of his competitors probably do.

From a phone conversation earlier today, I found Carlos to be a well-spoken and thoughtful person who seems like he genuinely wants to help people — while making a buck. He said he’s a former insurance adjuster and that there wouldn’t be a market for his business if insurers did their jobs better. He says insurance adjusters only role is to save insurers money and that leaves real victims without treatment.

Most of the people Carlos solicits (he prefers ‘markets to’) are low-income folks without health insurance or the means to see a doctor, he says. Some may not know their rights as accident victims. He feels the insurance system is leaving these people out in the cold.

While there’s a lot of room for healthy skepticism here, if low-income people are getting squeezed out of the system, then insurers might have a hard time getting the Texas legislature to enact pending legislation that would put Carlos and his competitors out of business.

Similar laws that prohibit solicitation and restrict access to accident reports appear to have cut down on fraudulent claims involving soft-tissue injuries. Let’s hope that they don’t also unwittingly restrict needed treatment for those who really need it. Insurers and policymakers need to make sure on both counts.