by Michael
It’s in the news, some people in Britain are deliberately killing or injuring their cat or dog in order to make an insurance claim. This is a fast growing insurance scam along the lines of the car accident scams that are well documented in the UK. I guess in hard times, killing your purebred cat cuts out the cost of maintaining the cat and it brings a financial windfall at the same time. Easy. It is alleged that some vets are also involved in euthanizing healthy companion animals to facilitate false insurance claims. An alternative is vets charging exorbitant and inflated fees working together with the client to claim insurance. It is difficult for insurance companies to challenge a vet’s fees partly because the records are discontinuous. People move around and use different vets. Another version is to claim for a lost pet that does not exist.
It seem astonishing to me but there has been a massive increase in fraudulent pet insurance claims since 2009. In 2010 the fraudulent claims amounted to almost £2m while in 2009 the figure was £420,000.
Britain is meant to be a country of animal lovers. This is not the Britain I know. Britain has changed enormously over the past ten years. Insurance scams are on the increase generally. But to deliberately kill or injury your cat or dog for financial gain seems horrific to me.
Fraudulent insurance claims are a crime as I understand it. If these people are prosecuted the sentence should include a ban on keeping companion animals – for life. I am sure that this never happens. I would doubt that people are prosecuted.
It may be the case that this massive increase in pet insurance claims is due to “hard fraud” managed by criminal gangs. We have a good deal of that in the UK. And a certain amount is imported from continental Europe or farther afield. This started when the European Union (EU) was expanded to include eastern European countries. Once a country is in the EU the citizens of that country have a right to free movement throughout the entire European community. I am just speculating.
