{"id":378626,"date":"2026-10-21T04:38:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T04:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378626\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T04:38:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T04:38:23","slug":"hochul-ny-police-announce-16-busts-in-statewide-crackdown-on-car-insurance-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378626\/","title":{"rendered":"Hochul, NY police announce 16 busts in statewide crackdown on car insurance fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Kathy Hochul and State Police announced Tuesday the arrest of 16 car insurance scammers who deliberately caused crashes <\/a>then filed $500,000 in bogus claims.<\/p>\n

Hochul, a Democrat up for reelection next month, trumpeted the arrests at a news conference in Manhattan as she said insurance fraud cases had tripled in the last five years \u2014 while warning that more arrests were to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cMark my words: These first 16 are just the beginning,\u201d Hochul said. \u201cFor anyone who thinks they can get away with a crash, think again. We are onto you.\u201d<\/p>\n

DuSean Barnett (left) swerves into a car sitting at a stop sign at a Brooklyn intersection, allegedly on purpose. New York State Executive Chamber<\/p>\n

The busts unfolded in the Bronx, on Long Island and upstate, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no tolerance for any individuals who commit fraud in ways that drive up cost for others or abuse public dollars for their own personal gain,\u201d Hochul said. \u201cAnd I have used every tool in my arsenal to stop exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scams followed a typical playbook \u2014 with individuals or groups of people piled into a car<\/a> deliberately causing crashes with unsuspecting drivers, who they then try to blame before filing claims.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what allegedly happened on Dec. 2, 2025, when 28-year-old DuSean Barnett allegedly swerved into a car waiting at a stop sign at a Brooklyn intersection and then tried to blame the unsuspecting driver of running the sign.<\/p>\n

Barnett filed a $16,000 medical claim \u2014 only for footage to later reveal Barnett\u2019s car was the only one moving at the time of the collision.<\/p>\n

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the 16 arrests at a press conference in New York on Tuesday. Brian Zak\/NY Post<\/p>\n

That claim was small potatoes compared to some of the others accused in the ongoing crackdown \u2014 a November 2025 fake collision allegedly involved scammers who tried filed over $150,000 in medical claims, while an October 2025 incident involved nearly $116,000 in claims.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the accused weren\u2019t even in the car at the time of collisions.<\/p>\n

Esgar D. Zavala Espinoza, 29, claimed $41,540 worth of medical bills after allegedly saying he was injured in a parked car struck by a tractor trailer on Staten Island, only for officials to later determine he was not in the car, authorities claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have never seen a staged crash, count yourself lucky,\u201d Hochul said. \u201cOver the last five years, we have seen a triple digit increase in staged crashes related to fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023 alone New York recorded 1,700 such incidents, the second highest of any state in the country that year \u2014 with Hochul saying the state\u2019s incidents were an \u201coutlier compared to the rest of nation\u201d and that a \u201cbroken system\u201d made it easier for criminals to game the system in the Empire State.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll that fraud drives up what New Yorkers pay in their insurance premium,\u201d Hochul said. \u201cThe average New Yorker pays some of the highest auto insurance rates in the entire country, about $4,000 a year. Almost $1,500 more than the national average.\u201d<\/p>\n

A group of scammers who got deliberately got into a car accident on a New York City highway last summer.<\/p>\n

Fake accidents have commanded headlines in recent months, with various videos emerging of cars swerving in front of others than slamming on the breaks.<\/p>\n

In one particularly egregious 2024 case, a car was filmed swerving across traffic<\/a> in an apparent attempt to cause a fender-bender.<\/p>\n

But when the car behind them safely braked, the scammers shifted into reverse and accelerated backwards into a collision. <\/p>\n

A pile of people then poured out of the attacking car, rubbing their heads and necks in pathetic feints of injury.<\/p>\n

Hochul, who is seeking a second full four-year term, is facing Republican Bruce Blakeman in the Nov. 3 election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Kathy Hochul and State Police announced Tuesday the arrest of 16 car insurance scammers who deliberately caused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[254,13319,426,57,9,24,55,54,56,10693,58],"class_list":["post-378626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-car-crashes","tag-insurance","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-scams","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}