Op-Ed | A strong anti-fraud agenda will support a more affordable New York
www.amny.com, Cassandra Anderson and Howard Handler, January 5, 2026
Across New York, insurance fraud is evolving at a faster rate than ever before. Schemes are becoming increasingly elaborate, and criminals more sophisticated. Our state’s anti-fraud laws need to keep up. If they don’t, New Yorkers will pay the price — an even higher cost-of-living in one of the nation’s already most expensive states.
Data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), the country’s leading voice on combatting and preventing insurance crimes, indicates that reported instances of fraud are on the rise. The number of reported claims containing indicators of suspected fraudulent activity has increased substantially year over year. In 2024, the NICB catalogued over 180,000 questionable claims, a 13% increase from the more than 159,000 submitted the previous year.
That fraud spans multiple lines of insurance, and across economic sectors, criminals follow a similar playbook. In one common scheme, they’ll intentionally cause an accident and exaggerate (or fake) an injury. They might pull out in front of your car on the highway and slam on their brakes, purposefully attempting to cause an accident. When you inevitably rear-end them, they’ll submit a bogus insurance claim and fight for a profitable payout despite not actually being hurt.
According to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, scams like these are increasing throughout the Empire State. Today’s criminals don’t stop with orchestrating car accidents, they’re more devious than that. They regularly work with complicit medical providers who artificially inflate medical bills in the name of “treating injuries” and “providing care.” Unethical attorneys then use these healthcare bills and pursue massive payouts from insurers. Once the case settles, everyone involved in the scheme gets paid while innocent New Yorkers are left footing the bill for criminal activity.
These schemes exacerbate the ongoing affordability crisis. The FBI has found that, over the last decade, fraud has imposed an invisible tax on American households. It costs the average family between $4,000 and $7,000, straining budgets which have already been tightened by other cost drivers. Those are real dollars siphoned away from communities every day.
New York ranks 45th in the nation in terms of cost of living and affordability, and 49th in economic opportunity. Insurance fraud only makes things more expensive. The NICB has determined that staged crashes, for instance, can raise the average auto premium $100 to $300 each year. This makes cars more expensive to drive, and the cost-of-living increases as a result.
Fortunately, there are concrete solutions that our legislators can implement to combat New York’s major fraud issues. We can discourage would-be criminals by making it illegal to stage an accident. This is just common sense. Yet, as of today, it’s not a felony to intentionally cause a construction site “accident” for the purpose of filing a fraudulent insurance claim. A bill introduced by Assembly Member David Weprin and State Sen. Leroy Comrie — both Queens Democrats — would change that, making the offense a class E felony. Continue Article