Think the old fake slip-and-fall routine only works once? Think again.
Isabel Parker, the 72-year-old queen of the slip-and-fall scam, prostrated herself in department stores, supermarkets and liquor stores 49 times for claims totaling $500,000 during her long career, a sad byproduct of her gambling addiction.
Quiggle says gangs have taken a page from the growing staged auto accident playbook to target merchants big and small for staged slip-and-falls.
"They will claim soft-tissue injuries against one business after another, like a skeet shoot," he says. "They'll go from one business to the next, assuming that each insurer will simply pay the claim to get it out of their hair as a nuisance."
The gangs figure that since every business has its own insurance, the chances of getting caught are remote.
But thanks to the Insurance Services Office, or ISO, which runs an all-industry database of insurance claims, it's easier for insurers who subscribe to ISO to catch gangs in the act.
"When you can connect the dots electronically to where you suddenly see one person who has made 15 slip-and-falls in the past year, alarm bells start to go off," Quiggle says.