Surveillance of Cheats and Fraudulent Claimants

Surveillance and investigation used against fraudulent claimants is growing as this epidemic is spiraling out of control. Dishonest people use the health and safety laws to their advantage either to engineer claims against employers for accident or mishaps in the workplace or simply to gain some extended paid time off work. To combat this trend, employers are fighting back by catching the cheats out where possible in order to separate the genuine claims from the fraudulent ones. We take a look at some of the surveillance methods used by private investigators to catch these cheats in the act.

Manual surveillance often involves lengthy stints of waiting around for the suspected fraudulent claimant to make a mistake. An investigator waiting and watching in a vehicle takes up many man-hours. This can often be an unremarkable car or panel van parked near to the subject's home. The investigator will normally have a stills camera fitted with a good quality zoom lens as well as a good quality video camera with an optical zoom capable of around 30x magnification. This is in order to obtain good quality film footage of any activity the claimant might be engaged in that they would not be physically able to carry out if their claim were genuine.

Finding a suitable location to conduct the surveillance is often very difficult. If the investigator were to place the observation vehicle too close to the claimant's home, they might be alerted to being watched. In a suburban street, neighbours may also become suspicious and unwittingly blow the whistle on the investigator by approaching them to ask what they are doing.

Different vehicles are used each day so not to arouse any suspicion. An alert fraudster might realise surveillance was being carried out upon seeing the same vehicle parked nearby on consecutive days.

Where there is no obvious activity at the claimant's home, the investigator will then be obliged to follow their movements. The hope would be that this would lead them to sports facilities, shopping malls or anywhere the claimant would have to engage in any activity that they claim they are unable to perform. For instance, they may walk for long distances when they claim not to be able to walk very far without assistance.

Of course this can and more often than not does, lead to dead ends. For instance, the claimant could get into the car and just take the kids to school and back, or pop to the local shop to buy a newspaper. This type of surveillance can be frustrating at times.

But all that frustration is forgotten the moment the investigator catches a claimant going off for a morning jog on videotape, when they claim they can't walk very far unaided. Filming the claimant climb up a ladder and start painting the front of the house when they claim severely reduced mobility is also deemed a success. Even better is catching them on film whilst playing football in the local park with their friends, especially when some of those friends are also claiming to be unable to work through injury or disability.

The job of surveillance requires infinite patience, a watchful eye and a steady nerve in order to catch the fraudsters out when engaging in activities that they claim to be unable to do. All the waiting and watching eventually bears fruit and proves the case against the false claimant, or it corroborates their claim should there be no evidence to prove other wise. One way or another, through the deployment of investigators to place the suspects under surveillance, the employer gets to the truth.

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