Targeting Lane Changes: Group Crashes 29 Times with Mothers and Girlfriends Aboard

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A ring of individuals has been arrested by police for intentionally causing traffic accidents and pocketing 240 million won in insurance payouts. To extort larger sums, they even placed their girlfriends and mothers in the passenger seats.

Reporter Lee Se-hyeon has the story.

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A taxi making a left turn along the lane guidance lines suddenly collides with a vehicle in the adjacent lane the moment it attempts to cross over.

[What is that!]

This is the intersection in front of the Lotte World Tower in Jamsil.

While making a left turn, the vehicle crashes head-on into a car changing lanes.

This footage captures the acts of a group that intentionally caused accidents by targeting cars changing lanes across Seoul, Guri, and Namyangju in Gyeonggi Province over a period of two years and five months starting in March 2023.

[Park Hye-ran / Victim: Something struck the back with a thud. I was wondering what it was, and when I looked, a young woman got out holding her neck. I was blindsided in a ridiculous way.]

They carried out such crimes a total of 29 times, with the illicit insurance payouts amounting to 240 million won.

Whenever they failed to receive their desired settlement amounts after causing a crash, they used a tactic of staying hospitalized for long periods even if they were not seriously hurt.

Investigations revealed that they would check into hospitals for up to five days even for accidents where only the side mirrors grazed, and they seated their girlfriends or mothers in the passenger seat to double their insurance payouts.

They took turns staging accidents using two secondhand cars purchased under the girlfriend's name and even committed crimes using rental cars provided by insurance companies following previous crashes.

[Lee Byung-hoon / Head of the Traffic Crime Investigation Team, Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency: In 2024, he has a record of receiving a 1 million won fine for the same type of insurance fraud. Considering that he habitually committed these crimes, we applied aggravated punishment, which allows for sentences under the Insurance Fraud Prevention Special Act to be increased by up to 50 percent.]

Police have detained a man in his 40s surnamed Ahn, the ringleader, on charges of violating the Special Act on the Prevention of Insurance Fraud, and forwarded Ahn's mother and girlfriend, who participated in the crimes, to the prosecution.

(Video reporting: Kim Seung-tae | Video editing: Lee Seung-yeol | Footage provided by: Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.