Lego fraudster among last year's most high-profile insurance scammers

A scammer jailed for making false home insurance claims about supposedly stolen Lego has been listed as one of last year's most high-profile insurance fraudsters.

The person was sentenced to 28 months in prison after an investigation found the claims were made up, insurance trade body the ABI said.

Other insurance fraud cases flagged by the ABI include someone who staged car crashes with people they met online and a complex travel insurance scam involving multiple fake identities and documents.

The average value of a fraudulent claim reached £14,300 last year, the second-highest level on record, the ABI said.

There was £1.34bn worth of fraudulent claims in 2025, a 14% increase on the £1.18bn detected the previous year.

At the same time, the number of detected fraudulent claims fell slightly to 93,900, down 2.7% on 2024.

Mark Allen, head of fraud and financial crime at the ABI, said: "Although the rate of detected insurance fraud fell slightly last year, our data shows that fraudsters are targeting much bigger payouts.

"As emerging technologies such as AI become more widely available, fraudsters will continue to look for new ways to exploit them."

Det Ch Insp Simon Klust, head of the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED) at the City of London Police, said: "Insurance fraud is not a victimless crime and those who commit it increase the cost of premiums for honest customers."

He added that the 250 cases a day detected by the ABI last year were "unfortunately likely to be just the tip of the iceberg".

One of the most notable fraudsters identified by the ABI last year was a man found by IFED to have fabricated reports of stolen high-value Lego sets, external.

The man's scam claims to Axa Insurance during 2021 and 2022 also included other high-value items such as MacBooks, televisions, gaming consoles and fishing equipment, IFED said.

In 2023, IFED said it found collectible Lego sets matching the ones claimed to have been stolen displayed in the man's living room during a search.

Alongside his prison sentence handed down last year, he was also ordered to repay the £14,000 he had claimed.

Other cases highlighted by the ABI included a man jailed for 20 months for manipulating women he met on dating sites into participating in staged car crashes, and a man sentenced to four and a half years for submitting over £300,000 worth of fraudulent travel medical emergency claims.

In general, the ABI said motor insurance remained the area where insurers identified the most fraudulent cases, accounting for 55% of all scam claims.

Meanwhile, the ABI's figures found that exaggerated loss remains the most common type of insurance fraud, with 26,900 cases identified.

This is when someone deliberately attempts to increase the cost of a claim beyond its true value, the ABI said.