Fraud is matter of opinion
A former judicial expert from East China University of Political Science and Law who gave false opinion in traffic accident cases stood trial for insurance fraud with two others, Qingpu District People's Court said on Tuesday.
On September 19 last year, Min Yinlong, head of the university’s judicial expertise center, and university worker Chen Chunrong were detained by Qingpu police, accused of insurance fraud.
According to prosecutors, two legal consultants Yang and Li were hired to represent a man named Huang to gain compensation in a traffic accident case. They were claimed to have asked judicial expert Zhu Longfu to make false statements and include Huang's hearing disorder, which he suffered before the accident, into his report, which made Huang's injury look much more serious than it was.
The trio helped Huang win a compensation of more than 860,000 yuan (US$126,470) in this case, including some 800,000 yuan given for Huang's "disability."
In another case, with false opinion provided by Zhu, an insurance company was ordered to pay 460,000 yuan for injuries and disability. However, later another opinion issued by Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University showed that the injuries were not that serious.
A third case involved more than 600,000 yuan.
During the hearing, Yang and Li said that they were ignorant of Zhu's deeds. Yang denied all the accusations and told the court that he never asked or hinted that Zhu should make false statements and knew nothing about whether the statements were true or not.
Li said although he noticed some problems, it was Yang who contacted Zhu and he himself did not know the details.
Zhu confessed to making false statements and said he was told to help Yang by his previous boss Min. According to Zhu, Min asked him to work for the judicial expertise center after her retired. In July 2013, Min introduced Yang to him. Under Min's instruction, he left the center in early 2015 and began working for a legal consulting agency whose owner is Min's wife.
Min asked him to cover the services of Yang and Li's agency and "care for" them. Sometimes Yang even told Zhu what result he wanted and Zhu always met his requirement.
Since Zhu thought a small agency's opinion might make the insurance companies suspicious, he usually gave his opinion under the center's name.
For himself, Zhu said he only took 1,000 yuan from Yang for each deal and never received any other payment.