Aviva believes David Oliver received more than £300,000 for selling not-at-fault data 

A crash data middleman who sold information passed on by a rogue Aviva claims handler has been ordered to pay the insurer damages.

Aviva believes crash data salesman David Oliver received at least £370,742 from flogging the data of non-fault motorists.

A judge ordered Oliver to pay Aviva £109,000 damages.

The background to the case started with Aviva claims team manger Kirstie Carruthers, who betrayed the insurer between 2013 and 2014, by selling policyholder data.

Carruthers secretly built a spreadsheet of policyholders’ number, name, make and model of car and phone numbers, Manchester High Court documents say. 

She then snapped the spreadsheet on her mobile phone and sold on the information.

One of her middlemen was Oliver. She sold data to him between September 2013 until her arrest exactly a year later.

Carruthers banked at least £16,200 for the data sales, court documents say. 

Oliver would then flog the illegally obtained data onto claims management firms. 

Carruthers eventually pleaded guilty to an offence under the Data Protection Act 1988 and was last year hit with a fine and confiscation order, the court papers say.

Explaining his decision to award damages, Judge Eyre was ‘satisfied’ that Oliver was the sole person Carruthers provided with the illegal data and ordered £108,651.59 payment.

Aviva had set up a costly team to investigate the data abuse, which the damages will help compensate.