Former insurance underwriter sentenced for fraudulent claims

A former insurance underwriter has been given a 15 months suspended sentence after carrying out multiple insurance scams.

Following an investigation by detectives from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED), Rachel Shoer, 42, was found to have made 13 fraudulent claims by using fake names to set up false insurance policies.

As a result, she claimed over £19,000 in seven years (2009-2016), all while working as an underwriter for an insurer.

IFED investigators found that Shoer had adopted a pattern of taking out a policy with a different insurer every year under a different name. She says her terrible history of claims under her real name made it impossible to take out home insurance, so she had to use false details.

Her claims ranged from property damage to theft - including multiple incidents where she used original pictures from her own wedding and 40th Birthday to make false claims on an engagement ring.

The case was first picked up in December 2015 when one insurance company’s internal investigation found multiple claims made under the same address, but using different names.

In July 2016, the company gathered all their information and referred it to the IFED. They then contacted several other insurance companies and found several policies in the preceding years following the same pattern of the one address, but with different names.

Rachel’s employer confirmed with IFED that they only had one name in their employee database for her, which was Rachel Shoer, and that all other names were false.

Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt, who led the investigation for IFED, said: “Rachel Shoer has been persistently deceitful and given her experience as an underwriter, it’s clear that she was keenly aware of the multiple offences of fraud she was committing.”

Shoer was sentenced at Wolverhampton Crown Court on to 15 months in prison, suspended for two years, and given a 200-hour community order.

Fryatt believes “she has been dealt a punishment that matches the severity of her crimes.”