Laughs are not usually forthcoming at an Association of British Insurers conference on fraud: attendees are generally too busy keening over the toll the legal profession is taking on their nine-figure profits.

But DCI David Wood, head of the City of London police team dedicated to tackling fraud, got plenty when he told of a dawn raid on a ‘crash for cash’ suspect last year. Wood and his team of detectives, flanked by a dozen kitted-out officers wielding a door rammer, approached the house in north London only to see a man making a hurried escape from a front window.

It wasn’t the original suspect: just a local ne’er do well who had chosen a spectacularly bad time to carry out a burglary. He was somewhat surprised to find half the Met Police offering him a guard of honour to the station.

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