A 56-year-old taxi driver was waiting for an accident to happen, And when it did, in December 2005, he sprung into action.

A car accidentally rear-ended his vehicle, leaving only a light scratch on the taxi.

But the taxi driver, identified only by his surname Park, pretended to be badly injured and got himself admitted to an orthopedic clinic.

He received around 9.2 million won ($6,713) from the other party’s insurance company for 60 days of hospitalization costs.

It later transpired that he actually was out driving his cab for 44 days of the two-month period, not in the hospital. Park was paid 37 million won from insurers for a total of 200 days of hospitalization, although he worked for all those days.

According to the nation’s financial watchdog, insurance fraud by taxi drivers is a widespread problem across the country. The Financial Supervisory Service yesterday announced the midterm results of its nationwide probe into insurance fraud by cab-owning drivers.

It said that 1,624 out of 37,000 cab drivers were found out to have committed the crime at least once. In total, cabbies conned insurers of 5.1 billion won, the FSS said.

The FSS said more illegalities will be disclosed later as a probe into more cab-owning drivers, numbering 107,000, gets under way.

“We began to look into insurance fraud, in particular cases involving taxi drivers, because they were said to be serious,” said Lee Sang-deok, a director at the FSS Insurance Investigation Office.

The FSS said it was able to confirm the illegalities with records of state fuel subsidies given to cab drivers.

Currently, local taxi drivers using diesel or liquefied petroleum gas-fueled vehicles receive discounts from the government when they refill their tanks at gas stations.

The offenders in the fraud schemes used gas stations on the days they were supposed to be in the hospital.
By Moon Gwang-lip Staff Reporter [joe@joongang.co.kr]
Joongangdaily.joins.com