This edition's Fraud of the Week features several fraud cases and is reprinted with permission from the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

"Operation Collateral Damage" crashed Northern California auto body shops this week. Undercover officers visited 69 Butte and Shasta County body shops to ask for estimates to repair a damaged car. Shop owners or employees were told that damage on one side of the car was from a recent wreck and was covered, and then were asked to fix old damage and still bill insurers. Most shops warned the officers that claiming non-covered damage constituted insurance fraud. But 20 agreed, and now face criminal charges. The California Department of Insurance lists all the shops and suspects at the end of this news release.

A man doused an SUV's interior with charcoal lighter fluid, but the fire soon went out because all the doors were closed, starving the flames of oxygen, a detective claims. That was just one reason this Pennsylvania auto arson case was so easy to solve. Police allege it went down like this: Leonard M. Starzmann II, the owner of the 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee and an auto repair shop, was on the phone at work, talking with his bank about his problems making payments on the vehicle. He hung up and exclaimed that he needed to get rid of the vehicle. A man named Harley Miller overheard and said he knew people who could make that happen, and Starzmann turned over the keys and $250. A third man drove the Jeep to a remote spot and torched it, police say. Knowing Starzmann was having trouble making his payments, the insurer immediately became suspicious of the theft loss claim.