Woman faces jail time over fraudulent travel insurance claims

A 30-year-old woman in Singapore was sentenced to jail after making a series of fraudulent travel insurance claims that cost over SG$14,000, according to a report by Channel News Asia.

Siti Saliha Muhammad Hussain filed a total of 20 fraudulent claims to AXA Insurance, AIG Asia Pacific Insurance, NTUC Income Insurance Co-operative, Aviva and FWD Singapore. She was able to receive 17 payouts by providing altered photos of damaged goods, receipts, boarding passes, and police reports to support her claims.

The scheme began in 2016 when Siti Saliha inflated the cost of the damage that was caused to her luggage during a trip to Kuala Lumpur, even filing a separate claim for another piece of luggage that had been damaged before the trip. She filed a total of four claims under policies she bought for herself, her mother, and her sisters.

“The accused felt that this was another opportunity to exploit the slack checks and balances in place for travel insurance claims, and intended to do so without her family’s knowledge,” Angela Ang, deputy public prosecutor, told Channel News Asia.

In 2017, after losing some items while on a trip to Tokyo, Siti Saliha falsely reported to the police that her belongings had been stolen. She then used this report to file a claim to AXA. She filed another false claim to MSIG later that year under a policy that she bought for one of her sisters. Two years later, she made a false claim that her mother was robbed while in Pekanbaru. No such trip occurred, said the report, and the policy was only bought as part of the scheme. 

According to Channel News Asia, Siti Saliha was sentenced to five months of imprisonment after pleading guilty to six charges of cheating, with 14 additional charges taken into consideration. She will begin serving her sentence in September after the deferment she was granted to settle a loan that she took out to pay off the insurers.