Rampant Fraud in Staged Accidents

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/rampant-fraud-in-staged-accidents/

Excerpt:

Whereas the plot of The Fortune Cookie may sound implausible, the reality is that insurance fraud is rampant. Fake and inflated claims are responsible for over $300 billion in claims leakage annually. Staged accidents are among the most grisly types of insurance fraud. Here, organized criminal rings comprising complicit attorneys, medical providers, and actors fake serious road injuries to extract inflated medical reimbursements and proceeds from insurers in civil litigation. Some such schemes have generated tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.

One recent example is so macabre that it should be made into a movie. Cornelius Garrison was a member of a Louisiana criminal gang actively perpetrating phony injuries in staged accidents. Garrison was a “slammer” in staged automobile “accidents”—a driver who intentionally crashes into other vehicles (preferably 18-wheelers) in order to fraudulently collect insurance settlements. Some have estimated that Garrison participated in close to 100 staged accident scams. But after fellow gang members learned Garrison had turned witness for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), his life was in danger. Co-conspirators offered to pay him to move to the Bahamas to escape retribution; however, Garrison chose to stay home, where he was murdered in a 10-bullet fusillade.

Staged accident fraud is a growing profit center for criminals. In R Street’s 2023 expert witness testimony to Congress on the seamy side of third-party litigation funding, we cited New York’s $31 million staged accident fraud ring, orchestrated by litigation funder Adrian Alexander. The largest scheme known at the time, it ensnared complicit attorneys and corrupt medical providers known as “medical mills,” engaging in artificial medical bill inflation and upcoding (the submission of claims containing codes for expensive medical services never rendered). Since then, another massive staged accident ring twice the size of Alexander’s has come to light: a $60 million racket that allegedly bribed 911 emergency line operators to direct callers to medical providers controlled by Bradley Pierre, the mastermind behind it.

Author(s): Jerry Theodorou

Publication Date: 16 Sept 2025

Publication Site: R Street

Regional banks, Jefferies shares tank as concerns about sour loans grow on Wall Street

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/regional-banks-and-jefferies-shares-tank-as-concerns-grow-on-wall-street-about-sour-loans.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Shares of regional banks and investment bank Jefferies tumbled on Thursday as fears mounted around some bad loans lurking on Wall Street.

Zions Bancorporation dropped more than 10% midday, as did Western Alliance Bancorp. The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) lost around 4%, with all but one member of the popular fund on track to end Thursday’s session in the red.

….

The worries about the health of the banking industry originated with the bankruptcies of companies related to the auto sector: First Brands and Tricolor Holdings.

Shares of Jefferies, which has exposure to First Brands, fell more than 9% on Thursday. The investment bank’s stock has lost around 23% in October, making it poised to record its worst month since the Covid pandemic took hold in March 2020.

Jefferies said that hedge funds it runs are owed $715 million from companies tied to First Brands, while UBS said that it has about $500 million in exposure.

“When you see one cockroach, there are probably more,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said on the company’s earnings conference call earlier this week in relation to First Brands and Tricolor Holdings fallout.

Author(s): Alex Harring, Sarah Min

Publication Date:16 Oct 2025

Publication Site: CNBC

U.S. Insurers Report a 1% Increase in Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities Holdings in 2024, Still 2% Below 2022 Peak

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/capital-markets-special-reports-cmbs-ye2024.pdf

Graphic:

Executive Summary:

  • The U.S. insurance industry’s exposure to agency and private-label commercial mortgage-backed
    securities (CMBS) totaled $287 billion at year-end 2024, a 1% year-over-year (YOY) increase.
  • Property/casualty (P/C) insurance companies were the primary driver of growth, with their agency
    CMBS exposure rising 22% to $36 billion.
  • Agency CMBS accounted for 28% of U.S. insurers’ total CMBS exposure at year-end 2024, reflecting
    a steady increase from 24% at year-end 2022.
  • The credit quality of the CMBS portfolio remained stable overall, with investments carrying an
    NAIC 1 designation or NAIC 2 designation totaling 97.6% of total exposure at year-end 2024.
  • Office property delinquency rates remain elevated at 9.6% as of July 2025, according to S&P Global
    Ratings (S&P Global) data.

Author(s): Michele Wong and Hankook Lee

Publication Date: 16 Oct 2025

Publication Site: NAIC, Capital Markets Special Report

‘Really scary’: Oregon schools, state agencies face another major increase in pension costs in 2027

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/09/really-scary-oregon-schools-state-agencies-face-another-major-increase-in-pension-costs-in-2027.html

Excerpt:

School districts and state agencies face another major hike in their payments to the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System during the two-year budget cycle starting July 1, 2027, according to new projections released last week.

The tab for individual public employers won’t be clear until December, when system actuary Milliman Inc. releases projected pension contribution rates for each of the system’s 900 participating employers for the next biennium. And those rates won’t be set in stone until next year, when the actuary knows how much the system’s investments earned in 2025.

Author(s): Ted Sickinger

Publication Date: 3 Oct 2025

Publication Site: Oregon Live/The Oregonian

Oregon’s PERS problem: Only bad options

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://oregonroundup.substack.com/p/oregons-pers-problem-only-bad-options

Graphic:

Service Union Employees International Union 503 boss Melissa Unger speaks at the Oregon Capitol in support of a $4.3 billion tax increase passed by the legislature last month.

Excerpt:

The timing of the latest financial projections from the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, as reported by The Oregonian’s Ted Sickinger, could not have been more appropriate.

As the Oregon Legislature was inching toward the conclusion of a special session it claimed was necessary to ensure continuance of basic road maintenance, the actuary for the PERS system issued preliminary estimates of investment earnings and required contributions by public employers indicating that the state is going to need a lot more money unless it finds a way to reduce pension obligations or operate more efficiently.

Whether your political preferences lean left or right or reside in the middle, the report should scare you. Unless the Legislature is able to accomplish one of three difficult things, the state’s descent toward the bottom of national rankings is likely to pick up speed. Here’s a look at each one, all fraught with risk.

Raise taxes more, probably a lot more.

….

Enact further PERS reforms

….

Downsize state and local government

….

This is a problem that has been building for a more than a half century. Aside from occasional efforts to make minor fixes that at best slowed the bleeding, the Legislature has chosen to ignore the problem and hope for a miracle cure in the form of outsized investment gains. But despite record stock-market gains over most of that period, the day of reckoning finally appears upon us. And, as usually happens when one delays necessary treatment, the patient already is in critical condition.

Author(s): Mark Hester

Publication Date: 7 Oct 2025

Publication Site: Oregon Roundup

Oregon Treasury Doesn’t Know, Doesn’t Care It’s Invested In Risky Crypto!

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://pensionwarriorsdwardsiedle.substack.com/p/oregon-treasury-doesnt-know-doesnt

Excerpt:

I note with great emphasis: “We do not possess thorough look through ability.”

That’s the first time I’ve ever heard those confusing words. Here’s a translation:

  1. State pension fiduciaries have failed to demand that external investment managers disclose to the pension on a timely basis all investments, including but not limited to crypto, in their funds’ portfolios.
  2. State pension fiduciaries have failed to disclose to Oregonians information they don’t possess regarding the pension’s riskiest investments.
  3. State pension fiduciaries cannot be monitoring the risks related to crypto investments they do not know they own.

Bad enough that the Oregon State Treasury is gambling $60 billion in high-cost, high-risk alternative funds. State officials don’t know—and apparently don’t even care—what’s in those funds.

Author(s): Edward Siedle

Publication Date: 10 Sept 2025

Publication Site: Pension Warriors, substack

Losing 40,000 men a year to suicide is a national tragedy

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/losing-40000-men-a-year-to-suicide

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Boys and men account for 80% of the deaths from suicide in the United States. This amounts to almost 40,000 male deaths a year, about the same as the loss of women’s lives from breast cancer.

But the crisis of male suicide is not getting enough attention. I’m still being told by well-informed people that among teens and young adults, the suicide risk is higher for women than men, a dangerous untruth.

There are lots of risk factors for suicide, including being a veteran or living in a a rural area. Native Americans also have a higher risk than other racial groups. But by far the biggest gap of all is the one between women and men:

Author(s): Richard V Reeves

Publication Date: 10 Sept 2025

Publication Site: Of Boys and Men, substack

Raising The Retirement Age Isn’t The Only Solution

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.independentwomen.com/2025/09/03/raising-the-retirement-age-isnt-the-only-solution/

Excerpt:

There are many reasons why changes to Social Security are unpopular and potentially harmful. One reason is that raising the retirement age may disproportionately impact low-wage earners. Studies have shown that low-wage earners at the age of 65 have a lower life expectancy than high-wage earners. So raising the full retirement age further due to a longer average life expectancy may force those income brackets with below-average life expectancies to bear the brunt of a difficult policy change. 

This impact disparately impacts low earners further because they are more likely to rely on Social Security Benefits for their full income at retirement. High-income earners rely more on private pensions, earned income, or assets. A rise in the retirement age forces low-income earners to either work longer or claim their social security benefits with penalties. 

….

One solution is a two-pronged approach that accounts for this: Raise the retirement age while changing the replacement formula. While increasing the retirement age will effectively reduce benefits, raising the replacement formula for the lowest bracket and reducing it for the middle- and upper-income brackets would allow low-income retirees to claim benefits at the current retirement age and receive current benefits if needed. This would also allow the biggest cuts to social security benefits to fall on those with other means for funding their retirement. 

Author(s): Kamryn Brunner

Publication Date: 3 Sept 2025

Publication Site: Independent Women