The National Insurance Crime Bureau (Palos Hills, IL) estimates that insurance fraud costs the average American household $300 per year through increased insurance premiums. Insurance fraud is not a "victimless crime."

Insurance fraud takes many forms:

• Unethical healthcare providers submitting claims for services never rendered, changing a diagnosis or procedure code on billing statements to obtain insurance coverage for non-covered items (such as aesthetic surgery or cosmetic dentistry), or providing excessive treatment or treatment that is not medically necessary. Often these healthcare providers will work in concert with scheming patients to collect on fraudulent disability claims, using middlemen to recruit "patients" for such scams--commonly known as "medical mills."
• Exaggerating a legitimate injury in an attempt to collect disability payments or prolong a disability claim.
• Fabricating an injury.
• Claiming total disability while continuing to work and collect disability payments.
• Policy misrepresentation–falsifying or intentionally leaving out information on a policy application, which if provided to the insurance company would result in the policy not being written.

These are just a few of the many forms of insurance fraud.

What can you do?

American General1 is committed to fighting insurance fraud through investigation of suspected fraudulent claims and policy misrepresentation.

If you suspect insurance fraud, contact us toll free at 1-800-250-8898, option 5. You will be connected to our fraud reporting center, which accepts calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All calls to our fraud reporting center are strictly confidential.

We thank you for your concern.

For more information visit www.InsuranceFraud.org

1 Important Legal Information about American General Life Companies