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, having an associate purposely cause a minor accident — and then falsely claiming they were injured.
Mother Georgette Powell was allegedly involved in several of the bogus insurance claims — with three of them occurring within a two-month span in 2023, the suit claims.
An Uber car used in an allegedly staged accident where Georgette Powell claimed she was injured. Obtained by NY Post“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 after an October 2023 hit-and-run where Powell was a passenger in an Uber, finding that incident “was a staged incident,” according to the suit.
Even though a photo taken by the driver showed only a few relatively minor scrapes on the vehicle, Powell allegedly claimed she was seriously injured and was paid out about $47,000, the suit states.
Her son, nephew, boyfriend and other reputed associates all also filed insurance claims alleging they were injured during Uber rides, the suit states.
Half of the eight total allegedly staged crashes occurred within two minutes of the rides beginning, according to the court documents.
The biggest payout was connected to an alleged Aug. 23, 2023 hit-and-run at 1:19 a.m. in Lynbrook, Long Island — resulting in the accused scammers pocketing nearly $110,000, the lawsuit states.
Powell’s Canarsie home connects nearly all of the named defendants. A phone number, a bank account and a shared iPhone 14 used to book the rides were all tied to the address — which was also listed as the residence for some of the accused, according to the suit.
She could not be reached for comment Wednesday. 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.
