Spring City woman charged after crash
A former Birdsboro woman has been charged with insurance fraud for falsely reporting the date of a crash.
BIRDSBORO » A former Birdsboro woman has been charged by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office with insurance fraud for falsely reporting the date of a crash that totaled her car.
Misty L. Frick, 32, of Spring City, waived her preliminary hearing Oct. 15 before District Judge David E. Glass in Birdsboro. She remains free to await further proceeding in Berks County Court.
According to the criminal complaint:
On Jan. 31, 2018, Frick allowed a relative to drive her car while she was at work. The relative went to Frick’s job that afternoon and told her that he had been in an accident while driving her children around.
No one was injured, but the car was undriveable. She and the relative went to the accident scene in Birdsboro. She called a towing contractor to take the car to her home in an apartment complex in Birsboro.
The next day, Frick phoned Progressive Insurance to try to reinstate her auto insurance policy. A representative told her the policy had been cancelled Jan. 16, 2018,
mobile claim application to file a claim. She reported that on Feb. 3 she was in a single-vehicle crash, striking an object while swerving to avoid a vehicle that entered her lane. She said the accident occurred on Philadelphia Avenue, also known as Route 724, in Birdsboro.
On Feb. 5, 2018, a Progressive representative took a recorded statement from Frick about the accident. Frick said she was the sole person in the car and repeated that the crash occurred Feb. 3 about 5 p.m.
She said she was coming home from work and exiting a ramp when a car traveling in the opposite direction came into her lane, causing her to lose control and drive into the bridge abutment.
She told the representative that her relative was at her home watching her two children and that she told the relative about the accident when she got home.
On. Feb. 6, 2018, a Progressive investigator went to Frick’s apartment complex and met with the manager. The investigator obtained security camera footage that showed Frick’s car was towed to the complex on Jan. 31, 2018, at 3:10 p.m., three days before she claimed the accident occurred.
That meant the vehicle was not covered by her new or expired insurance policies.
A claims adjuster estimated damages to her vehicle at $4,244, but Progressive denied Frick’s claim because the crash happened prior to the policy’s inception.
The fraud investigation was referred to the attorney general’s office.
In May 2019, two agents with the attorney general’s office interviewed Frick at her workplace and she admitted lying about the date of the accident and who was driving to get the damages covered.