The Fraud Is Strong With This One (Lo, He Was Tempted by the Total Loss)
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This past week I was neck-deep in training with my carrier—another step in the march toward being cut loose to handle claims on my own. I’ve been drinking from the firehose of policy language, claim scenarios, damage thresholds, and every “what if” known to the insurance galaxy.
The topic of the week? Prior damage. Fraud. Claim settlement strategy. In other words, stuff that in theory should be new and eye-opening. But let’s be honest—I’ve been around this stuff since the first time someone said,
“Hey man, while it’s in the shop for the door, can you just throw the bumper in too?”
Some of the SIU (Special Investigations Unit) stuff was new in a formal sense—structured training, flowcharts, official triggers. But the actual fraud itself? Oh, that’s been there since forever. Like cave paintings of shady Neanderthals asking for free mammoth dent repairs.
“Happy to Commit a Felony for You, Sir.”
Back in my shop-running days, I used to joke with one of my estimators:
“Why yes, Mr. Customer Who I Just Met, I’d love to risk my job, license, and reputation to help you commit insurance fraud that benefits you and you alone. Sounds like a wonderful business plan. Let me grab my felony pen.”
It was a joke. Mostly.
But honestly? Nobody bullshits harder than some people standing at the front counter of a body shop. They just don’t want to admit they hit something.
Most of the time, it's misguided. They have insurance. They’re covered. But rather than say:
“I wasn’t paying attention and hit the mailbox.”
“I clipped that tree pulling out.”
“I was absolutely rocking out to ‘Black Betty’ by Ram Jam and totally lost control.”
Instead, they spin some ridiculous story, probably thanks to a friend who "knows how this stuff works"—spoiler alert: they don't.
They think it’ll keep their insurance rates from going up or make it a comprehensive or uninured motorist claim with a better deductible,. What it actually does is set off every red flag in the book.
When you look at cars every day, the damage starts talking. It’s easy to read when things line up—and when they don’t, it sticks out like a dent on a Bentley. Glaring. Obvious. Like “we backed into a raccoon that was going 65 mph” obvious.
Being Mr. Customer Service, I always tried to give people a gentle out:
“Hey, maybe let’s just say you backed into something and didn’t see it.”
But if they pushed, I pushed back:
“Look, I’ll write this the way you’re asking, but here’s what’s gonna happen. The insurance company isn’t full of idiots. They’ll send it straight to SIU. Your claim will grind to a halt, they’ll start investigating, and they might deny the whole thing—because you wouldn’t just be honest about the fact that your cousin Joey drove into a utility pole while chasing a squirrel.”
Pattern Recognition: Body Damage as a Language
When you’ve looked at cars every day for years, the damage starts speaking its own language. You learn to read it like a mechanic reads a parts catalog. A scrape whispers where something brushed by. A dent shouts the direction of impact. Mismatched damage? That’s someone trying to sell you a bedtime story.
Like when I see circular paint transfer on wheels instead of a straight horizontal scuff—yeah, that tells me the wheels were rotating when you sideswiped something. Not this fairy tale where you were inside watching Happy Days in your underwear and just happened to come outside and find it like that.
You can practically smell when a story stinks.
And when the damage doesn’t match the tale—like a perfectly clean door hit on a car that allegedly spun out into a ditch? Red flag city. It’s like someone claiming they got mugged in a locked bathroom stall. I wasn’t born yesterday. It didn’t happen that way
Church Van Chronicles: “Go Forth and Inflate Thy Damages”
One of my all-time favorites was the church van incident. We had one of those 15-passenger Ford Econolines come in—real Noah’s Ark on wheels. It had legitimate front-end damage from an accident on the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Towed in. Properly filed. All looked good.
I wrote a comprehensive estimate—full teardown, all the right ops, part pricing, procedures. I was actually proud of it. A+ estimate. Something you’d frame in the breakroom if anyone appreciated estimates the way they do finger paintings.
Eventually, the pastor—or deacon or bishop or Reverend Grandmaster Flash, I forget the exact title—showed up. He was clearly the one in charge. We’ll call the place The Cathedral of the Unexpected.
We went over everything—the damage, cost, deductible, repair timeline. Straight boilerplate stuff.
Then he leaned in and said,
“This needs to be a total loss.”
I politely explained we were only at 65% of the vehicle’s ACV (actual cash value), and most carriers total out at around 75%. It wasn’t there.
He looked at me very seriously and said:
“Go forth and find more damage, my son.”
Okay, he didn’t actually say it like that, but that’s how it landed in my brain.
I said, “Look, we’ve already got it fully torn down. There’s nothing else hiding in there. Maybe a part price changes slightly, but we’re not going to magically find another 10% in damage.”
Then he pointed out back and said,
“There’s a 30-yard dumpster out there. Why don’t you just hit it one more time?”
Let that sink in.
I remember thinking: What would Jesus do?
Not Old Testament smite-y vengeful gods. The carpenter one. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have driven the church van into a dumpster for a little insurance leverage. Even if we’re adding an 11th commandment, it would read:
Thou shalt not commit insurance fraud just because it’s easier than selling a used van.
I declined. Politely. No preaching. We fixed the van right. I saw it driving around town a few times afterward—still hauling folding chairs and righteous intentions.
Bonus Round: Other Favorites from the Front Lines
Here are a few more head-scratchers from the “You Can’t Make This Up” file:
1. The Invisible Deer
A guy once told me a deer hit him... from the side.
Like, full 90-degree impact. Not only that, it left a dent the exact height and shape of a Jeep Liberty bumper. Wild, right?
He even said, “I guess it must’ve been running really fast and low to the ground.”
I said, “Like a deer on a moped?”
2. The Pre-Damaged Rental
A woman returned a rental car to our shop (we had a contract with the rental company) with a bashed-in quarter panel and told the rep:
“Oh, that was already there. I didn’t even notice it when I picked it up.”
Except she had signed the walk-around sheet. And the damage was so fresh the bumper paint was still flaking off.
When confronted, she said—and I quote:
“Well, maybe it happened when I drove through the leaf pile. It was a big pile.”
3. The Fence Hit and Run
We had this guy come in with a pretty banged-up front end on his SUV—bumper torn up, grille cracked, headlight dangling like a loose tooth. Looked like he plowed into something solid at a decent clip.
When I asked what happened, he goes:
“I was parked at Walmart. I came out and someone must’ve backed into me.”
I looked at the damage again.
The impact was dead-center front, with paint transfer from a wooden fence. Not a bumper, not another car. A fence. Vertical grain, bits of pine embedded in his plastic.
So I ask, “Did the person take the fence with them when they fled the scene?”
He pauses, then adds:
“Yeah. They probably had, like, a trailer. With a fence on it.”
A fence trailer.
Like a mobile privacy fence roaming the parking lot, just smashing into innocent SUVs and then disappearing into the night.
I offered him a chance to revise his statement, but he doubled down and filed the claim exactly like that.
The adjuster took one look at the photos and said:
“Tell him Walmart’s fence has filed a counterclaim.”
4. Hail Mary
One customer came in after a bad storm and wanted to know if we could... add a few dents. “Since it’s already a hail claim,” he said,
“couldn’t we just make a few more?”
I asked, “Do you want me to throw golf balls at it or take it through a car wash with a bag of nickels?”
He laughed. I didn’t. He left.
In Conclusion...
The truth is, most people just panic. They listen to bad advice from their cousin who works at an oil change place. They think they’re “working the system” when in reality, they’re setting themselves up for a declined claim, a fraud investigation, or worse.
And I get it. Nobody wants to pay a deductible. Nobody wants their rates to go up. But let me tell you—there is nothing more stressful than being dragged into someone else’s lie with your name on the estimate.
These days, I’m learning how to spot this stuff from the insurance side. But my shop days trained me well. People lie. Cars don’t.
And when someone asks you to hit the dumpster just one more time for Jesus?
Politely decline. Then write a blog about it.
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