As if anyone could still doubt that all personal injury claims are fraudulent and must be stamped out immediately, the following shocking story will surely put the matter well and truly to rest.
A Harley Street physician, one Dr Benjamin Change, stands accused of inventing a fictional physiotherapist to treat people claiming to be suffering from the fictional affliction of whiplash.
Now, you might imagine that some fictional therapy might be just the thing for a fictional complaint – but the sinister part is that the bills Dr Change was sending off to insurers are said to have been anything but fictional.
That’s right, what Dr Change was doing, allegedly, was sending his patients off to see a fictional physiotherapist called Helen Preston (of Proteus Healthcare) who did not even exist, and then sending real bills to insurers, for real money!
Change is accused of using a rake to amass literally thousands of pounds over a period of two years until an insurance company became suspicious that Proteus Healthcare and its resident back-rubber Helen P were in fact nothing more than figments of Dr Change’s depraved imagination.
In court, David Povalley prosecuting claimed Dr Chang had been perpetrating this outrageous pretence in order ‘to enrich himself’ and to pay off debts to his family – although he did not specify in which order.
Mr Povalley said: ‘In a nutshell, Dr Chang systematically defrauded insurance companies by causing invoices to be paid for physiotherapy treatment that had not been provided.”
Investigators from insurance firm Liberties Direct claim that when claimants were questioned they revealed that they had never received any physiotherapy from Proteus – or if they had they had only received two sessions rather than the ten for which Dr C typically billed insurers.
‘Dr Chang knew that these invoices were false,” insisted David Povalley, “and that there was no physiotherapy – or not the amount being claimed for.” And any physiotherapy that might have been provided – just a couple of sessions, say – was presumably imaginary in any case and therefore worthless, like other imaginary things. Except not like money, which is valuable.
The trial continues, apparently.
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