Copyright held by The John Cooke Fraud Report. Reprint rights are granted with attribution to The John Cooke Fraud Report with a link to this website.
September, the time of year the most often asked phrase in America becomes, “Tell me what you learned today (insert name here).”
John Cooke Fraud Report, 16 months and counting. “So tell me what you learned so far, Leslie…”
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MAINTAIN A STRONG BACK-UP SYSTEM. On August 3, our computer network crashed. It wiped out six weeks of records and the resurrection was not fun. We solicit subscriber understanding, in advance, for unearned late notices that may come your way. We think we recaptured everything, but only time will tell.
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DO NOT WRAP YOUR UPS BOXES WITH DUCT TAPE. We won’t tell you which DA’s office it is—but we will tell you it is among the largest in the country. When they recently received a duct tape-wrapped bulk box of Fraud Reports … and nobody recognized the initials JCFR in the upper left hand corner of the box … and a call to the Orange Police Department yielded the information that Suite 135 of 777 South Main Street is a vacant building (so much for the address location talents of our local PD), they (the DAs) evacuated their entire building (on a busy Friday afternoon) and called in the bomb squad.
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NEVER, BUT NEVER, BURN BRIDGES. While there are hundreds of thousands of individuals involved in the insurance fraud-fighting industry, it’s still a small, small world. The man (or woman) you treat like a dog today, may show up with a whip tomorrow. But there is a lesson here for the whip-wielder, too: Revenge may, indeed, be sweet, but the pleasure of winning is overrated and usually not worth the energy.
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IF YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN IT ALL, YOU HAVEN’T. The smart adjuster, SIU investigator, defense attorney, private investigator, prosecutor, editor, etc. understands that a successful tomorrow will not depend on what s/he already knows, but on recognizing and learning the things s/he does not know. This person also understands that the most damning sentence in (any) business today is, “But we’ve never done it that way before.”
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NO PLAN IS SET IN STONE. The John Cooke Fraud Report was born as a result of our ideas, but continues to grow and define it’s place in our industry because of your ideas. If someone had told me 16 months ago that fraudfighters throughout the world would be jumping onto our subscriber bandwagon, I would have thought that person was crazy, drunk or worse. Almost every day we hear a new success story that was, at least in part, a result of increased communication/education within our fraud community.
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SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE. After this 16-month surprise- and pleasure-filled voyage, I believe more strongly than ever that the two key words in the battle against insurance fraud remain exactly the same as we stated in our premiere May/June 1994 issue: communication and education.
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THE MOST UNDERUSED PHRASE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS THANK YOU. Thank you.
© Copyright 1995 Alikim Media