Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Dire Financial Straits Find People Destroying Their Cars

by Leila Brillson on June 29, 2009 at 05:29 AM


When times are tough, people turn to schemes and scams to solve their money woes. And as drivers are having an increasingly hard time dealing with gas-consuming vehicles that require monthly payments and insurance fees, some have fallen back on a good old-fashioned solution: insurance fraud by setting fire to, intentionally crashing, or ditching their own rides.

The Los Angeles Times reports that, during the first quarter of 2009, suspicious vehicle fires in the U.S. leaped 27-percent from last year, intentionally destroyed or abandoned cars climbed 24-percent, and staged car accidents rose 34-percent. Since consumers shell out a premium every month, they are hoping that insurance companies might not check out every claim. Not true. In fact, since crime rates tend to rise during economic downturns, claims agents tend to be more diligent in their investigations, especially when vehicle arson numbers are experiencing such a dramatic upswing. [From: LATimes.com, via The Consumerist]

Tags: car, cars, economy, fraud, insurance, recession, top

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular