A preacher, a rock guitarist pensioner and an award-winning hotelier were among the British insurance cheats exposed last year.

The number of insurance claim frauds uncovered in the UK has risen to 1300 a day, with fraudsters now convicted or cautioned at an average rate of two every week, according to research by the Association of British Insurers (ABI).

The total number of fraudulent claims and applications detected reached 469,000 in 2018, up 3% from a year earlier. The value was up 6% and the average con was £12,000 ($21,774).

Of the total, 98,000 were fraudulent claims, down 6%, at a value of £1.2 billion ($2.18 billion).

Dishonest insurance applications were up 5% at 371,000.

Motor insurance scams remained the most common and most expensive, with 55,000 dishonest claims worth £629 million ($1.14 billion) detected, of which 80% involved personal injury fraud, including staged “crash for cash” frauds. The number and value were both down from the previous year, falling 8% and 9% respectively.

There were 20,000 property frauds detected worth £115 million ($208.67 million), a rise in value of 11%.

Some of the scams uncovered included:

• A gang that staged car crashes to con nearly £1.2 million ($2.18 million) from insurers was jailed for a combined total of almost 39 years.
• Five men were jailed for a total of 14 years after making fake claims of nearly £1 million ($1.82 million) for damage and lost earnings from restaurants. It turned out they had deliberately smashed water pipes and the restaurants had never been open for business.
• A man who sold fake motor fleet insurance policies to cover 70 vehicles was jailed for two years.
• A preacher, and self-styled bishop, was jailed for 10 months after fraudulently buying motor insurance using another person’s details, then claiming he had crashed his car into another vehicle. It turned out he owned the struck vehicle, and the car he said he had been driving was in the church carpark at the time.
• An award-winning hotelier claimed £34,000 ($61,700) in disability income from his insurer saying that his depression and anxiety meant he could not work, when he was in fact running a hotel. He received a 14-month suspended prison sentence.
• A man was jailed for 16 months after he made multiple claims to different travel insurers claiming illness meant he had to cancel his family holiday. He used fake airline tickets, bank statements and emails of hotel reservations to claim nearly £20,000 ($36,291).
• A woman who staged a fall over a crate in a supermarket in West Yorkshire to claim compensation received a 21-month suspended jail sentence.
• A man dropped his claim for hearing loss caused by his work when it emerged he was the frontman in a rock ’n’ roll band – despite claim documents denying he had any noisy hobbies.