Chorley fraudster jailed for £12k home insurance scams

A Chorley man who was spared jail for making a string of fake home insurance claims has been locked up – for doing the same thing again.

Joel Mtebe was handed a suspended sentence in 2017 after making 15 fraudulent claims to RSA Insurance. But less than two years later he started again and within 12 months he used fake identities to make 15 more claims against the same firm to receive payouts of almost £12,000.

Using aliases such as Thomas Bass and James Thurnburrow he successfully claimed for issues such as a supposedly damaged TVs and a lost iPhone. He also saw claims rejected for a phone lost down a drain and a lost backpack.

In August 2020, a policy was taken out in the name Steve Mason and RSA spotted errors in documents used to support a claim in the October. In December, another policy was made under the name Matthew Hamilton and when he used this to report a lost Apple Mac Mini, it was noticed the invoice used to support the claim had been edited.

After further investigation, RSA linked all four insurance policies to Mtebe and the case was referred to IFED in September 2021.

In March 2022, IFED officers arrested Mtebe and executed a search warrant at his home address. Evidence found on Mtebe’s laptop, which was seized by officers during the warrant, linked him to two of the policies.

Mtebe, of Darwen Fold Close, Buckshaw Village, admitted during his police interview that he had made the fake claims. He stated that another man known as “Matt” set up the insurance policies and gave him the details of what to claim for.

Mtebe said he would withdraw 70 per cent of the money he received from RSA in cash and hand it to Matt, but officers found that the cash had never been withdrawn from his bank account.

Two further policies under the names Nathan Macintyre and Jack Grover were linked to Mtebe, and he was interviewed by IFED officers for a second time in January 2023. Mtebe told officers that he took out a policy as Macintyre for his own financial gain. When Mtebe was asked why there was no evidence to show that he was withdrawing 70 percent of his payouts in cash to give to Matt, he was unable to provide a clear explanation.

At Preston Magistrates Court, the 37-year-old pleaded guilty to eight counts of fraud by false representation. He was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court to 20 months in prison.

Detective Constable Dan Weller, from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED), said: “Mtebe concocted a series of stories, which ranged from him falling over and dropping his phone down a drain to a child smashing a toy into his TV screen, all for the purpose of making a quick gain.

“Claims like these push up the cost of insurance premiums for everyone else, which means that honest customers end up paying the price.

“It was disappointing to see Mtebe’s name once again when this case landed on my desk, but hopefully the sentence handed down will finally teach him that, no matter how many names you hide behind, insurance fraud will always be caught out in the end.”

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