Suspicious Insurance Claim
A suspected insurance fraudster spends 72 hours trying to convince an investigator of the truth
Chapter 1. Investigation Room, D+0
The fluorescent light flickered. Once, twice. The sound of Investigator Oh Se-jin placing a stack of documents on the table cut through the flicker.
“Mr. Kang Min-jun, the accident occurred at 2:47 AM.”
I nodded.
“It didn’t rain at that time.”
It was a room with no windows. The air smelled of photocopier toner. The fraud investigation team office at Cheongmok Fire Insurance was smaller than I’d imagined. One table. Two chairs. One fluorescent light.
“Here’s the data from the Korea Meteorological Administration.” Investigator Oh slid the printout across. “Your dash cam recorded the wipers running.”
I stared at the paper. The numbers were clear. Humidity 34%, precipitation 0mm.
How do I explain this?
72 hours. That was the maximum legal time the investigation team could hold the insurance payment. If I couldn’t prove I wasn’t a fraudster within that time, the file would go to the Financial Supervisory Service. From that point on, it would be my lawyer talking, not me.
“The wipers were on auto mode,” my voice shook more than I expected.
Investigator Oh didn’t write anything down.
Chapter 2. Convenience Store Parking Lot, D-3 Days
Three days before the accident, I sat in a convenience store parking lot for an hour without moving.
My mother’s hospital bill was in the passenger seat. Three pages. Surgery costs, intensive care unit admission, chemotherapy prescription. Total: 24 million won. An amount beyond what insurance covered. I used the calculator twice to confirm how much was over. I was hoping the calculator was wrong.
It wasn’t.
That night, I drove home thinking. What if I got into an accident? If the car was totaled. If insurance paid out.
That would have been a plan.
But it wasn’t a plan. At that moment, I just felt the world I lived in was too narrow. 24 million won was the wall of that world.
Chapter 3. Investigation Room, D+1
The next day, Investigator Oh pulled out photographs.
Not accident scene photos. A CCTV capture. About 400 meters before the accident location. Timestamp: 2:31 AM.
“Is this your car?”
It was. Stopped in the middle of the road. Emergency lights on.
“Why did you stop?”
I remembered. Drowsiness washing over me. There was no shoulder, so I pulled over. I cracked open the window. That was all. Sixteen minutes later I drove on, and exactly sixteen minutes after that, I hit the guardrail.
“I was drowsy.”
“Why were you driving that road at 2 AM?”
“I was coming from my mother’s hospital.”
Investigator Oh wrote something down for the first time. I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. His face was blank as a fluorescent light.
Chapter 4. The 70th Hour
The fraud investigation team at Cheongmok Fire Insurance processed thousands of suspicious claims every year. According to Financial Supervisory Service data, the amount of detected insurance fraud in the country annually ran into hundreds of billions of won. People like Investigator Oh were behind those numbers.
I thought about that for the first time at the 70th hour.
The hospital records arrived. My mother’s admission records. The day of the accident was the day after her discharge. The visit record from the night before. My exit from the parking lot at 1:20 AM.
Investigator Oh closed the file.
“We’re lifting the payment hold.”
I couldn’t speak.
“However,” he added, “the cause of the automatic wiper activation remains unclear. It will be recorded in the file.”
He took the documents and left. The door closed.
The fluorescent light flickered again.
I stared at that flickering light for a long time. The insurance money would come. I could pay my mother’s bill. But those 72 hours — when I sat alone in a convenience store parking lot, pressing the calculator twice — that night was never recorded anywhere, and it never disappeared anywhere either.
I still don’t know whether that makes me a fraudster or just a person.
This article is provided for informational purposes and is not investment advice.