A Brooklyn family was allegedly part of a ring of car insurance fraudsters that staged bogus crashes to bilk Uber and Liberty Mutual out of more than $300 million, a stunning new lawsuit claims.
The rideshare company, in a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, accused 13 individuals and eight medical providers of colluding to defraud it and the insurance giant by ordering rides and falsely claiming injuries after having another associate purposely cause a minor accident.
Mother Georgette Powell was allegedly involved in at least four of the claimed fraudulent accidents — with three of them occurring within a two-month span in 2023, the suit asserts.
“I find the expression ‘once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern’ to be applicable in this situation,” an independent arbitrator wrote of one of Powell’s alleged crashes, finding the 2024 incident in an Uber “was a staged incident,” according to the suit.
Even though a photo of the vehicle taken by the driver showed only a few relatively minor scrapes, Powell claimed she was seriously injured and was paid out just about $47,000, the suit alleges.
Powell’s Canarsie home connects nearly all of the named defendants, with the phone number, a bank account and the single iPhone 14 used to book the rides tied to the address, which was also listed as their residence.
Two of her sons, as well as her cousin and twin sister’s boyfriend – all of whom shared the same Brooklyn apartment address – have all filed injury claims against Uber, the suit states.
Half of the eight total staged crashes occurred within two minutes of the rides beginning, per the court documents.
The accusations from the ridehare behemoth come as Gov. Kathy Hochul is fighting recalcitrant state legislators on changing the laws around car insurance liability to make it harder for bad actors to game the system for hefty payouts.
“The ‘fraud tax’ that burdens every New York driver has been fueled by an epidemic of staged collisions inflating local premiums,” Uber spokesperson Josh Gold told The Post.
“The legislature needs to stop blocking Governor Hochul’s common-sense reforms that will save New Yorkers money by finally ending the rampant fraud and litigation abuse that have made New York car insurance unaffordable,” the spokesperson said.
The issue continues to prove to be one of the thorniest issues holding up an agreement on Hochul’s $263 billion state budget plan, which she’s tacking the policy issue onto to take advantage of her leverage in talks.
Shipping company FedEx took another unrelated ring of fraudsters to court just last week, alleging even nastier claims of doctors ratcheting up unnecessary medical treatments and surgery for bogus accidents.
— Additional reporting by Peter Senzamici
