False claims can lead to genuine trouble

9:35am Monday 12th June 2006

REPORTING your mobile as stolen instead of lost, just to claim on your insurance, could lead to jail.

This is the warning from police as they crack down on false reporting of mobile phone thefts in Hillingdon.

Detective Superintendent Geoff Ervine from Hillingdon police told the Hillingdon Times: "False robbery and theft reports involving mobile telephones occurs for various reasons.

"Many telephones are merely lost or misplaced and youngsters, fearing the reaction of their parents for losing what can be an expensive item, do make a false allegation of crime.

"People also try to make false claims for insurance purposes. What these people need to know is that improved investigating techniques, whether involving widespread CCTV in public places or on public transport, liaison with the mobile telephone companies and covert police observations, are identifying such false claims."

He added: "The result being those persons making false claims can end up in court and receive a criminal conviction. A simple message is: do not try to make false crime allegations on Hillingdon Borough."

The national mobile phone crime unit, mobile phone network operators and major insurance companies regularly share information in a database to identify false reports so that they can be thoroughly investigated and offenders prosecuted.

Detective Inspector Kevin Gibson, based at Uxbridge police station, explained the penalties. He said: "False reports can be many and varied, it would depend on what the offender did or intended to do with the information.

"A straightforward false report would be dealt with by way of wasting police time' under the Criminal Law Act and carries a penalty of six months imprisonment and, or, a fine this could be by way of a fixed penalty notice of £80 for over 16s and £40 for 14 to 16 year-olds.

"Using the detail for an insurance claim would involve a fraud and carries on indictment at the Crown Court of up to seven years imprisonment.

"If it was a more drawn out and complex enquiry where, say, someone was arrested as a result of the false report then it might amount to an offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice' which on indictment is a common law offence that carries a penalty of imprisonment up to, and including, life."