A London man has been charged for running a “ghost broker” fraud scheme and pocketing about £50,000 within the span of just 15 months.
On July 06, 2002 at the Inner London Crown Court, Rodney Bruce Van der Puye of Cator Street, Southwark was sentenced to 21 months imprisonment, a suspension for two years, and was also ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work. He had previously changed his pleas from not guilty to guilty by false representation, money laundering and providing a regulated claims management service while unauthorised.
Van der Puye, 34, ran his ghost broker scheme by taking out fraudulent insurance policies using the identities of his mother and unwitting members of the public. He was caught after the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) linked some 28 suspicious policies to his name.
A release said that the case was then referred to the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED) for further investigation, which found even more fraudulent policies that were connected to Van der Puye.
IFED’s initial investigation examined the suspicious policies first found by the IFB, which were set up from 2016 to 2017. The policies were taken out in either Van der Puye’s name or that of his mother, but many of the policies used addresses, email addresses, and bank accounts which were linked to other people. The City of London Police also reported that 26 of those fraudulent policies uncovered were taken out to insure only four vehicles over two years. It was also found that the policies were consistently cancelled after the payments were declined due to the bank accountholder’s details not matching with the policyholder’s.
“When this case was referred to IFED from the IFB, we knew we had a seasoned ‘ghost broker’ on our hands. However, it was only when we seized evidence from Van der Puye that we realised the extent of his offending,” said Detective Sergeant Adam Maskell, who led the IFED investigation.
A search warrant was executed by IFED officers at the home of Van der Puye’s mother, where he was living at the time. Van der Puye himself had arrived at the scene in a black BMW – one of the vehicles he had insured through fraudulent policies. The vehicle, the property, and three phones were seized by the authorities.
While Van der Puye claimed only one of the three seized phones was his, forensic investigators managed to gain access to one of them and found over 50 WhatsApp conversations and text messages related to fraudulent policies. The evidence identified at least 113 fake policies set up by Van der Puye between May and July 2018 alone.
“The mobile phones we seized turned out to be a goldmine of overwhelming evidence, which Van der Puye could not dispute. In spite of this, the ‘ghost broker’ still tried to shift the blame during interview and even entered an initial plea of not guilty,” Maskell continued in a statement.
The evidence uncovered from the phone revealed that some of Van der Puye’s “customers” were aware of the fraudulent nature of the policies. Van der Puye was also addressed in some of the conversations as “Rodney,” and it was noted that he had charged about £80 to £150 for his “services.”
“From the start of this investigation, it was clear we were dealing with a ghost broker unlike any other. Not only was this fraudster using stolen personal information to sell bogus insurance policies on a large scale, but his customers were also in on the act – requesting fraudulent motor insurance so they could use the road without being detected for no insurance,” said IFB head of Intelligence and Investigations Stephen Dalton.
In the investigation into these payments, Van der Puye provided authorities with the details of two bank accounts, including one under the name of his former partner. It was through this bank account that authorities found £50,000 worth of transactions were made between May 2017 and August 2018, and all related to insurance policies. Of the £50,000, £27,000 was transferred to an account in Van der Puye’s name, another £6,500 to his mother’s account, and £3,800 was used to pay for rent.
IFED officers interviewed Van der Puye’s former partner, who alleged that she was unaware of the deposits, claiming that the account was not her main one. The company handling Van der Puye’s rent payment also stated that his payments were typically made from various bank accounts and cards, and thus subjected to chargebacks due to suspicions of fraud.
Van der Puye was confronted by the IFED about the fraud - he initially claimed that the policies were taken out by a broker he had found on Instagram, but he did not provide any more information when pressed.
“This case goes to show just how far-reaching and dangerous the impact of insurance fraud can be. Now that Van der Puye has been stopped in his tracks, it also means many of his so-called clients who were knowingly flouting the law, have also been prevented from committing fraud,” said Dalton.
According to a new report by consumer group Which?, ghost broker scams cost the average victim £1,950. To test how prevalent ghost broking is, Which? also did a quick search of “cheap car insurance” on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and found that more than half of profiles offering quotes and coverage to UK drivers have no authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority.
