Auto insurance fraud ring busted by Winnipeg police

Winnipeg police have arrested at least 15 people after members of an organized fraud ring bilked the Manitoba Public Insurance Corp. of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

MPI's special investigation unit caught on to the fraudulent automobile insurance claims in November last year.

A spokesman for the publicly owned MPI called the group a "gang" and said its members operated in concert to purchase high-end SUVs in other provinces and bring them across the border.

The vehicles would be repaired to meet Manitoba safety requirements and their odometers rolled back to increase their apparent value. The group would then stage collisions to destroy the vehicles and subsequently try to collect on a fraudulent vehicle insurance claim.

MPI spokesman Brian Smiley said the company hasn't seen anything like it before.

"This is unique, and it is a gang committed to defrauding the corporation, and they are sophisticated," he said. "They knew what they were doing, and fortunately our investigators were able to determine what was happening, and at this point arrests have been made, property seized, documents seized."

Smiley said it's too early to calculate the exact dollar value of the frauds, but he said it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Police executed several search warrants in Winnipeg on Wednesday, using the tactical unit in a number of takedowns. MPI said it expects more arrests to follow.