No doubt your mom or dad (or perhaps a teacher, a wise old friend or a kindly stranger) once told you that when you cheat at something, you’re only cheating yourself.
It’s a popular old adage; if only it were true.
Their point, obviously, was that by cheating, you lose out on both the opportunity to learn to do something properly and the satisfaction that comes from a job well done.
Or — if you have a working conscience — you risk subjecting yourself to an unnecessary bout of guilt.
So, sure, you’ve been cheated.
But it’s with the word “only” that I take exception.
Last week, ICBC released its top six fraud files of 2015 and revealed that, collectively, cheaters are costing the insurance provider more than $600 million per year. That, they say, translates to about $100 added to every customer’s annual bill.
I don’t know about you, but that’s $100 I’d far rather be spending on something else. Anything else.
For that added cost in 2015, we can thank the guy who boarded a bus after it had already crashed and claimed an injury. Happily, security cameras caught him in his lie.
And then there was the woman who tried to cover up the fact it was her own son who had stolen her car and not some unknown individual. A combination of eye witnesses, phone records and security cameras led to her downfall.
And let’s not forget the man who claimed he’d been too badly injured in a crash to so much as help with the dishes at home. Investigators collected footage of him lifting box after box of heavy floor tiles at his work site.
These are the people whose antics are costing us all.
For a lot of folks, I suppose, it’s a game. “How much can I get away with?”
For others — who no doubt feel like they’re being fleeced by insurance companies — it’s probably a form of payback.
But the truth is, it isn’t the insurer who ultimately pays. It’s you and me.
Yes, it costs a lot to properly insure a vehicle in B.C. — even with a clean driving record.
I was stunned when I moved back to the province in the late 1990s, after spending time in Alberta and Saskatchewan (where a few hundred dollars would give you basic coverage for the year) to see my rates skyrocket.
Yes, B.C. has more dangerous winding mountain roads, and denser pockets of population and we all pay for the added risk these conditions create.
Whether that’s fair is another conversation.
So why, then, do I also need to cough up an additional $100, so that, for example, a Vancouver woman who’d claimed she was too injured to work could sneak away to her job and effectively collect two paycheques. She made the list, too.
In 2015, ICBC opened approximately 7,500 fraud investigations. Those who are caught and convicted are fined and otherwise punished.
But for every cheater who is nabbed — whether it’s thanks to new-fangled technology or old-fashioned sleuthing — just think of how many likely don’t get busted. They’re out there, “cheating themselves,” left, right and centre.
And the rest of us are left paying the price.