Insurance fraud can cost a business millions of dollars in lost revenue but when it's a public entity like SGI  that lost money could be used to improve the services for everyone that's why March is fraud prevention month at SGI. Tyler McMurchy with SGI talks about Fraud the SIU and one of the fraud cases from last year that stood out to him.

"March is fraud prevention month, so here at SGI we thought we would take the opportunity to talk about insurance fraud. We want people to know that SGI is serious about preventing insurance fraud both on the auto fund side and the property side with SGI Canada. So SGI has a dedicated team the men and women of the Special Investigation Unit that investigate potentially fraudulent claims. We want to remind people that insurance fraud costs everyone, your insurance rates are very much dependent on the cost to that insurance company no matter what insurance company you're a customer of and in Saskatchewan pretty much anyone who drives a vehicle is a customer of SGI. Insurance fraud costs us all it results in a higher insurance rate for you, your family, your friends, your neighbors and every time a fraudulent claim is paid or someone cheats their insurance everyone else has to pay the cost in higher insurance premiums so that's why we take insurance fraud very seriously."

Unfortunately, insurance fraud takes place more then anyone would like with the special investigation unit closing a total of more than 1400 files in 2018 and according to McMurchy, that's a typical year.

"Not every single one of those files is necessarily fraudulent sometimes a customer will withdraw a claim if information is presented to them that would indicate that this is something they shouldn't be legitimately claiming. We did see estimated savings to SGI customers of approximately 5.6 million dollars in 2018  and that's an average year between 5 and 6 million dollars is not unusual, unfortunately, insurance fraud is a significant concern for every insurance company in the industry and that's why we have an SIU."

If you think you have what it takes to outwit the investigators i would think again, every single member of the SIU has over 10 years of law enforcement and investigative experience. These men and women have one job and one job only and that's to catch people who think they can get away with insurance fraud. SGI released a few of the top fraud stories of 2018 and i had to ask McMurchy what one stood out most to him.

"The one that really caught my eye is the DNA airbags, one customer reported that their keys were stolen, their vehicle was stolen and a collision took place blocks away from his home and damaged a number of other vehicles. Something didn't smell right to SIU investigators who suspected the vehicle owner had been behind the wheel at the time of the accident. The SIU actually obtained a DNA sample from the deployed airbag and it was a match to the vehicle's owner, the probability that this would happen, that a random individual would share the same DNA as the vehicle owner is about 1 in 40 quadrillion so that's with 12 zeros so its pretty safe to say it wasn't anyone else behind the wheel."