RORY SALAZAR | Finance | Contact
A motoring enthusiast who was born and raised in Betoota Ponds is today considering insurance fraud in order to save himself $79 this year.
The opportunistic criminal-to-be and father of two beautiful kids, Robert Hahn, told the Advocate he’s never broken the law before but doesn’t see too much wrong with a little white lie on his car insurance renewal form.
“It’s not gunna kill anybody. Besides, look at this,” Hahn said, showing the digital renewal application form to the Advocate.
“Saying your car is kept outside on the street pretty much doubles the annual fee compared to saying it’s garaged overnight.”
The fees did indeed reduce by $79 when Hahn ticked ‘garaged overnight’ instead of ‘outside on street’, a 20% reduction overall.
Looking outside Hahn’s living room window, the Advocate saw a red Toyota Corolla parked outside on the street, which Hahn verified as his vehicle.
The Advocate then confirmed with Hahn whether he now intended to start garaging the vehicle overnight, to which Hahn replied, “I don’t have a garage.”
Later, the Advocate spoke with insurance claim dispute lawyer, Adam Terry (46), about Hahn’s intentions. While Terry acknowledged that Hahn would reduce his annual fee by 20%, the lawyer became fixated – overly so if you ask the Advocate – on the fraud aspect of the situation and not the savings.
Terry harped on about insurance fraud, explaining that whether it’s a once-off thing or a pre-meditated series of frauds, it’s a serious indictable offence where the penalties can be imprisonment for up to 10 years or a substantial fine or both.
This means if Hahn divided his once-off $79 savings by each potential year in prison, he is saving less than $10 per prison year, which hardly seems worth it.
However, during his sentence Hahn would also reduce the amount of car trips made each year, thus saving on fuel. Plus, he could let his car insurance lapse for the decade he’s in the slammer. This would save him a whopping 100% annually on car insurance for a period of up to 10 years, as opposed to the measly 20% currently envisaged for this year alone.
While the decision may appear simple, it is unknown which way Hahn went in the end.
