21 years, and I'm just starting to investigate this. Turns out to be an all too common occurance. Insurance fruad is an $86 billion a year industry, and occording to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, roughly 10% of all the personal injury claims made are scams committed by professional con artist. The above details what's knows as "opportunistic" fraud. No one's really sure what percentage of personal injury claims are of that nature, but my estimates put it at an additional 20 to 40 percent.