Insurance Law

The Amazing Fraudini!

By George Wallace

Gloria Teasdale: I thought you left.
Chicolini: Oh no.  I don't leave.
Gloria Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes.
Chicolini: Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

-- from Duck Soup (The Marx Brothers, 1933)

In an article in Insurance Journal, investigator Brad Ballentine discloses the hitherto unsuspected similarities between insurance fraud and stage magic:

One trick that magicians often rely upon is the tendency we all have to assume things.  They very often use props of objects we are all familiar with, so that when we see the prop, we assume it is the genuine article.  For instance, the magician pulls out an egg, and we subconsciously assume it is an actual egg, and not a hollow plastic shell, or he presents you with a deck of cards and we subconsciously assume that it is a genuine deck of cards and not a trick deck.  Most people seeing a scarf or handkerchief might unwittingly assume it to be nothing more than that, instead of realizing that two scarves of the same color, stitched together on three sides, still looks like a single scarf, but makes a nice pouch in which to hide things (like a hollow, plastic egg).

Similarly, in the world of insurance claims, we are constantly being presented with something that looks like the genuine article, and thus, our tendency is to assume that it is.  A report about injuries and treatment written on a doctor's letterhead causes us to assume that there was an actual patient, that there was an injury, that there actually was some treatment and there actually was a doctor who was in some way involved with that report . . . .

Via the always interesting Law and Magic Blog, which is about exactly that.

Full post as published by Declarations and Exclusions on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).