In Queens, New York, Wednesday, October 16, there was a collision involving two cars on Belt Parkway. One woman got the collision on dashcam, stating it was staged as part of an insurance scam.
On Tuesday, October 22, Ashpia Natasha posted the footage to TikTok, which now has over 6 million views.
In the video, a silver Honda was driving in the middle lane and suddenly cut in front of Natasha’s car, leading her to hit the brakes of her car. The Honda then reversed backing up into the front of Natasha’s car.
In the footage, Natasha could be heard saying, “Oh my God! What is he doing?…I got into an accident,” as she’s talking to her husband.
After the Honda pulled away from Natasha’s car, you can see the driver climbing into the front passenger seat as the backseat passenger is trying to hold a covering, blocking the view. As the people in the vehicle began to get out, they acted as if they were injured and then began taking pictures and videos of the damage, when one of them spotted the dashcam.
Natasha stated that she continued to treat it as an accident. “I just proceed to treat it as an accident. You know, I asked them if they were okay. We were able to exchange information. The guy in the video, he told me that the female was the driver and she doesn’t speak any English,” Natasha said.
She explained how they were rushing to leave, saying that they needed to pick up their baby. As she turned around to check up on her car, they just got into their car and left as shown in the footage.
Later, Natasha wrote in the caption of her TikTok video that she believed the accident was set up to make it seem like Natasha hit the Honda for “insurance fraud purposes.” She then wrote how the first three passengers got out of the car pretending that they were injured. As this was happening, the fourth passenger got out of the car, and into another vehicle.
After reviewing the footage multiple times, Natasha realized that it was a set up. “I watched the video multiple times and that’s when it hit me that, oh my God, this is probably a setup,“ she said.
It later came out that two months earlier, the same thing happened to a woman named Alyssa Attanasio. Her dashcam caught the same silver Honda slamming into the back of her red Kia.
Natasha took her evidence to officers where they confirmed these scams aren’t uncommon. People stage these accidents and falsely claim personal injuries to collect payout from insurers.
Per National Insurance Crime Bureau, fraudulent car accidents tend to occur more frequently in urban and wealthy areas where more vehicles can be found. Criminals often prey upon females driving by themselves.
A New York City Police spokesperson stated in an email to PEOPLE on October 22 that the investigation “remains ongoing by the NYPD Criminal Enterprise Investigation Unit’s Fraudulent Collision Investigation Squad.”