A private investigator, used by insurers such as
Allianz and CoverMore, raised eyebrows at a Sydney event last month after he presented how he dodged capital movement controls to bring to Australia more than US$20,000 of recovered cash.
The Sunshine Coast-based private eye’s questionable methods were presented at an insurance fraud conference only a few weeks after the Australian industry agreed to tighten rules on investigators to address rising complaints of inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour.
At the Insurance Fraud Summit 2017, Phil Peart told participants, which included fraud officials and police officers, how he recovered over US$20,000 from an Egyptian accountant who defrauded several insurance companies,
The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
He said he split the money with his wife for their return to Australia in a move which he later told
Fairfax Media was “for safety and security reasons” and to allow them to depart Egypt, which only allows each traveller to leave the country carrying a maximum of US$10,000.
In Australia, travellers are required to declare cash exceeding $10,000; and jail terms of up to 10 years could be given to people who knowingly bring into the country the proceeds of crime.
Peart said he made a declaration to Australian border authorities but was unsure whether his wife did the same. He clarified that his wife came with him as a holidaymaker and had not been working for his UK insurance company client, the report said.
“I did everything by the book,” he said. “This was not my money. I have all the documentation. This was the first and only time this has happened.”
The private eye said he got a signed agreement with the fraudster under an arrangement that “happened at the direction of the insurer,” who as he phrased it “wanted their whack back.”
One fraud expert who attended the event said Peart had been naïve to accept the cash from anyone in his line of work.
“You leave yourself open to allegations of wrongdoing and damage your credibility,” the expert told
Fairfax.
The expert also noted that the fact some insurance companies were “mostly interested in getting their cash back” rather than the ethics or legality of how this was achieved leads to little active oversight of external investigators.
“The reality is, if you are an insurance company and you don’t have anyone internally managing this stuff, you don’t have a clue what they’re doing,” he told
Fairfax.
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