A man and a woman have been sentenced at Portsmouth Crown Court after they pleaded guilty to a number of insurance fraud offences which cheated RSA out of nearly £280,000.

An investigation by the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department found the duo worked together to make 82 fraudulent payments into the woman’s bank account.

Kevin Macey, 49, of Pennington Way, Fareham was sentenced to three years and four months imprisonment for one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of money laundering. Debbie Starkings, 57, of Cupnor Road, Portsmouth was sentenced to two years imprisonment (suspended for two years) and a 20 day community order, for one count of theft and one count of money laundering.

The pair worked together to commit fraud against RSA for four years from 2012 to 2016. Mr Macey worked as a personal claims specialist at RSA and colluded with Ms Starkings to make false claims against an insurance policy that she held with the company. In his role, Mr Macey was able to agree to claims made by policyholders, which he did until 31 July 2016, when he took voluntary redundancy.

An RSA internal investigation found one bank account had received a number of significant payments and the system helped trace names and others claims associated with that account number.  They found that the account was linked to Debbie Starkings who held a contents and building insurance policy with RSA and it was her who was receiving the payments. RSA referred the case to IFED and a full criminal investigation was undertaken.

Mr Macey helped Ms Starkings make five claims over two years which amounted to over £200,000. Mr Macey then started to make false claims against other people’s policies and sent the money for those claims to Ms Starkings bank account. Overall he had processed fraudulent claims for Ms Starkings which amounted to £279,641.

City of London Police’s Financial Investigator, Simon Styles, who led the investigation for the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department said: “Macey abused the position he had been put in by RSA and took complete advantage of his customers, using their details to help him collude with Starkings. Starkings was equally complicit in this fraud and her greed meant she went on to submit multiple false claims.

“The sentencing goes to show that it is not possible to get away with this crime and that we will do everything we can to work with the insurance industry to ensure fraudsters are caught and made to pay.”

John Beadle, head of financial Crime and Counter Fraud at RSA, said: “RSA have a zero tolerance attitude towards any dishonesty involving our staff.  Once internal controls highlighted the activities of Macey and Starkings, we had no hesitation in reporting the matter to IFED in order that both could be brought to justice.”