
The consequences of faking an accident to 'cheat' the insurer
The first section of the Court of Ciudad Real has sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of seven months at a rate of twelve euros per day to a resident of Manzanares, who was found guilty of attempted fraud in medial competition with false documentation, for simulating an accident: he tried to pass off an accidental fall of his motorcycle as a collision with another vehicle to collect 17,000 euros from the opposing insurer.
The judgment, which was served on the parties this month, further orders that testimony be deducted and the person, a friend of the defendant, who signed the friendly report of an accident he was not even in, be prosecuted for alleged false testimony, according to the court.
The injured party initiated the lawsuit
The defendant, who has appealed, (the sentence is not yet final), will have to pay the procedural costs of a lawsuit he initiated himself in 2016, one year after the accident. The case was tried in January in the Provincial Court of Ciudad Real (it has been notified so late due to delays caused by the strike of court clerks at the beginning of the year).
The court declares proven that he was driving alone with his Yamaha motorcycle on May 2, 2015 on a road in Horcajo de los Montes when he went off the road (around a quarter past five in the afternoon), "without the intervention of another vehicle", and after the accident he conspired with a friend, owner of a car insured by Plus Ultra, to obtain an illicit benefit. Both signed a friendly report stating that the accident had been a collision. As the company did not consider it so at first, a year later in 2016 he filed the lawsuit that has given rise to this criminal trial for procedural fraud in the Audiencia.