Life and Funeral Insurance Fraud
Life insurers' fraud investigations have turned up more evidence of deathly get-rich schemes in which syndicates take out funeral insurance on victims they subsequently kill, in order to submit a claim.
Syndicates, particularly in the Eastern Cape (but not limited to this Region), look for every opportunity to exploit and there has been an upward trend with unnatural deaths in the last few years, according to Megan Govender, convenor of the Forensics Standing Committee at the Association of Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA). High-profile cases involving murders contributed to R787.6 million in fraudulent and dishonest claims on funeral, life and disability claims that were detected last year, the ASISA statistics reveal.
These organised criminals were involved in 68 of the 3 268 cases of fraud involving funeral policies last year according to statistics released by ASISA, as they are familiar with life and funeral insurers' policies and procedures. In some cases, they murder a victim and in others they obtain paupers' corpses from mortuaries and stage hit-and-run accidents. It isn’t always syndicates that kill but also opportunists, who are sometimes family members that have also killed for life insurance pay-outs.
South Africans were shocked last year by the Court Case of Nomia Rosemary Ndlovu, a former Policewoman, who was handed six life sentences for the murder of her partner and five family members in order to claim funeral and life insurance taken out on their lives. Also last year, a Pastor and hitman were sentenced to life for the 2018 murder of a member of their congregation whose life they had insured.
View this article online to see how to “look out for the vulnerable, funeral policies favoured, keeping yourself safe, fraudulent documents and how to Blow the whistle!”