NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- New York state investigators arrested 16 people accused of staging car crashes and faking injuries to collect nearly $500,000 from insurers, one of the first major enforcement actions since Governor Kathy Hochul made auto insurance fraud a focus of her effort to lower costs for drivers.
The cases announced Tuesday include coordinated collisions and allegedly fabricated injury claims in New York City and upstate. In the Bronx, investigators say groups deliberately sideswiped a tractor-trailer on the Cross Bronx Expressway and staged another collision that generated more than $154,000 in medical bills.
In Queens, a 25-year-old man is accused of staging an accident in which he claimed to have been struck by an Amazon truck and collecting more than $18,000 in no-fault benefits. In another case, investigators say a 28-year-old Brooklyn driver intentionally struck a car stopped at an intersection, blamed the other motorist for running a stop sign and submitted more than $16,000 in medical claims. Video contradicted his account, according to the state.
The arrests were made by a joint task force of New York State Police investigators and Department of Financial Services specialists and follow measures Hochul proposed earlier this year to target organized staged-accident rings. Her plan called for allowing prosecutors to pursue the people who organize staged crashes, rather than only those directly involved in a collision, and for tightening the definition of a serious injury in insurance cases.
Suspected motor vehicle insurance fraud has risen sharply in New York. Insurers reported 43,811 suspected incidents to the state’s Insurance Frauds Bureau in 2025, according to state figures. The Department of Financial Services has previously investigated organized rings that recruited participants, instructed them how to cause collisions and directed them to specific medical clinics afterward.
Hochul’s administration has estimated that staged crashes and related fraud can add as much as $300 a year to a driver’s insurance costs. The governor has made lowering auto premiums part of a broader affordability push as New Yorkers face some of the highest insurance costs in the country.
“Every staged crash, fraudulent claim and criminal scheme ultimately drives up costs for New Yorkers who play by the rules,” Hochul said in a statement.
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