Popular media
Books, movies and television shows about insurance fraud
Books
The
Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World and Led
the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History
By Ellen Joan Pollock
Wall Street Journal senior reporter Ellen Joan Pollock tracks the
elusive, multimillionaire financier Martin Frankel in her new book,
"The Pretender: How Martin Frankel Fooled the Financial World
and Led the Feds on One of the Most Publicized Manhunts in History."
(Available in hardcover and e-book formats.) Click
here for more information. Ms. Pollock will speak at the May
9 luncheon of the coalition's spring board of directors meeting.
Broken
Promises: Fraud by Small Business Health Insurers
By Robert Tillman
As the costs of medical care have skyrocketed, so has the amount
of money lost to fraudulent health insurance providers. These bogus
operations typically victimize individuals on the lower end of the
socioeconomic scale who then face staggering medical bills without
coverage. Broken Promises is a much-needed study of insider health
insurance fraud. Robert Tillman shows how market conditions and
weak regulatory structures have allowed these crimes to occur, and
cites recent institutional and legal changes that have created both
new demands for insurance and greater opportunities for fraud. He
also analyzes the political and economic climate that enables these
criminal practices to flourish. Click
here for more information. The coalition assisted the author
by providing background information about health insurance fraud.
Accidentally,
on Purpose: The Making of a Personal Injury Underworld in America
By Ken Dornstein
Accidentally, on Purpose is the first book to document the
making of America's most peculiar criminal underworld. Not centered
on the traditional activities of organized crime - drug dealing,
gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking, protection, or bookmaking
- this improbable underworld has been built from the raw material
of faked personal injuries. Accidentally, on Purpose takes
readers back to the late nineteenth century to the earliest slip-and-fall
artists, one of whom, "Banana" Anna, feigned injuries
for money by slipping on banana peels on steam trains throughout
the Midwest. Readers then encounter the "ambulance chasers"
and "shysters" of old New York who pioneered the personal
injury trade; the accident racketeers of the 1920s; the excesses
of self-mutilation for profit during the Depression; and the whiplash
industry of the 1960s and 1970s. Through original interviews and
research, Dornstein also reports on contemporary gangs whose members
travel the streets of cities around the country staging car accidents
for insurance money - the "cappers" who script accidents,
the "dummies" who sit in cars for crashes, and the doctors
and lawyers who call the shots from behind the scenes. In this engaging
chronicle, Dornstein tells an original story about a culture in
which greed, desperation, and freemarket incentives in the legal
system have transformed accidents and injuries from random instances
of bad luck into the solid foundations of a vast secret economy.
Movies
Curse
of the Jade Scorpion
Starring Woody Allen
CW Briggs is the top insurance investigator in 1940s New York. Well,
that's what he keeps telling the top efficiency expert, Betty Ann
"Fitz" Fitzgerald. Briggs prides himself on being able
to crack any insurance caper by getting into the mind of the thief,
but the hypnotic powers of the Jade Scorpion gets the mind of the
thief into Briggs... Click
here for more information. 2001
Double
Indemnity
Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson
Smooth talking insurance salesman Walter Neff meets attractive Phyllis Dietrichson when he calls to renew her husband's automobile policy. The couple are immediately drawn to each other and an affair begins. They cook up a scheme to murder Mr. Dietrichson for life insurance money with a double indemnity clause. Unfortunately, all does not go to plan... Click here for more information.
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Television shows
Friends
Episode #16, 1994-95
PLOT: The high jinks continue as an injured and uninsured
Rachel needles Monica into defrauding
the hospital by letting Rachel use her insurance. Ross continues
to grapple with impending fatherhood. Phoebe and Joey kiss! (Of
course, he thinks she's Ursula.) Far superior to the pallid Part
1 thanks to Monica and Rachel's wickedly funny insurance-fraud-necessitated
identity swap. (From Entertainment Weekly)
The
Simpsons
King-Size Homer, May 1995
Homer discovers that he can get out of going to work if he can be classifed as disabled. He seeks to become hyper-obese so he can be classified as disabled. With help from Bart, he gets up to 315 pounds and is rewarded by being ordered to work at home, which means having to do no work at all.
The
Simpsons
Dumbbell Indeminity, March 1998
When Moe goes broke romancing a new love, he enlists the aid of Homer in an illegal scheme to collect $5,000 dollars from his automobile's insurance policy. But after Homer botches the scam, Moe must find a way to bust his best customer out of jail.
Do you have an example of how insurance fraud has been portrayed in popular media? Send an e-mail message to info@insurancefraud.org and tell us about a book, movie or tv show and how it portrayed insurance fraud.
