When Ian Davey of Davenport, Florida, filed an insurance claim for a 2023 car crash with a day care bus in Queens, he filled in a section asking whether the incident was staged with a definitive answer: “Hells F–ing NO.”
But there were some red flags.
The doctor who declared Davey “totally disabled” by his injuries was a urologist practicing at a hospital in Bangladesh, according to court documents. Records show the only witness to the collision owned a personal injury consulting firm and later retracted his statement to investigators. And the surgeon who operated on Davey was named in a civil racketeering case as part of an alleged criminal network that staged crashes and exaggerated injuries to inflate insurance claims.
“ This case is a fraud from top to bottom, an entirely manufactured claim,” said attorney Dan Johnston, who’s representing the bus driver. “The most horrifying part is that this is a set of circumstances that repeat over and over again every single day in the courts of New York.”
Legal experts say the state is seeing an “epidemic” of staged car crashes. The New York Department of Financial Services’ Insurance Frauds Bureau reported nearly 44,000 incidents of suspected auto insurance fraud in the state last year — an 80% increase since 2020.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and a coalition of business groups are now pushing for changes to the state’s auto insurance laws they argue will crack down on staged car crashes and reduce ratepayer premiums across the board. But some of those closest to the issue say the phenomenon won’t be stamped out so easily.
“ She's to be applauded for at least picking up the sword,” Johnston said.
Hochul wants to dramatically roll back New York’s no-fault insurance system. Under current law, people are entitled to up to $50,000 worth of damages after a crash — regardless of who’s found to be at fault.
The governor’s proposal would cap payouts for people found to be “mostly” at fault for causing a crash. It would also tighten what qualifies as a serious injury, limiting the number of people who are able to collect in court.
The governor and her allies argue that the cost of fraudulent payments gets unfairly distributed across the risk pool, increasing prices for policyholders and contributing to New York’s high premiums. New Yorkers paid $1,935 on average for auto insurance in 2024, which is the fourth-highest rate in the country, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
“These common-sense proposals will crack down on the bad actors that are driving up the cost of car insurance and putting that financial burden on innocent, hardworking New Yorkers,” Hochul said in a statement.
But representatives for trial lawyers say Hochul’s plan would hurt innocent car crash victims.
“ The proposals that she's put forth only increase the profits of insurance companies while decreasing the rights of individuals,” New York State Trial Lawyers Association President Andrew Finkelstein said in an interview.
Finkelstein argues the real problem is that the country’s largest insurance companies are pocketing record profits. He called the issue of staged car crashes a “Trojan Horse” for policy changes that benefit insurance companies and transportation giants like Uber.
Uber would benefit financially by limiting its legal exposure and liability following collisions — and the company is throwing its weight behind Hochul’s proposals. Citizens for Affordable Rates, a lobbying group backed by Uber, told state regulators it intends to spend $7 million in support of the issue.
Proponents point out that the trial lawyers have a lot of skin in the game, too. The New York State Trial Lawyers Association is consistently one of the biggest spenders on lobbying at the Capitol and has deep ties in the Legislature.
Although they differ on legislative solutions to the issue, both sides say they agree staged car crashes are a problem.
Take the 2023 crash in Queens between Ian Davey and the day care bus. Johnston, the attorney, said he started looking into the circumstances surrounding Davey’s claim after the bus driver told him the collision never even happened. David Kushmakov, who was driving a yellow school bus, said in legal filings that Davey and his girlfriend chased him down in the street and said he’d sideswiped them.
Johnston filed a counterclaim challenging Davey’s narrative. Evidence that Davey appeared to be in dire financial straits emerged, with court documents in New York and Florida showing Davey was notified his Florida home was being foreclosed a week before the incident.
A week after Davey said he was hit, a doctor named Mir Ehteshamul Haque declared him “totally disabled,” court records show. But Haque is a urologist, and an online medical profile shows he treats patients at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on a “regular basis.”
Haque could not be reached for comment.
In May 2024, court documents show Davey and his fiancée received spinal fusion surgeries from a Long Island surgeon, Alexios Apazidis. Excerpts of the surgical reports for both patients in the court record appear nearly identical, suggesting they were copied and pasted.
Apazidis is separately accused in a racketeering lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York of performing “unwarranted and unnecessary” spinal surgeries on patients who staged trip-and-fall incidents and car crashes. Apazidis had his medical license temporarily suspended in 2015 for negligence and incompetence.
Attorneys for Apazidis did not respond to requests for comment.
A little over a month after the incident in Queens, and a month after he was declared totally disabled, court documents show Davey was arrested in Osceola County, Florida, for attempted burglary. According to the police report, an officer saw Davey try to enter a car by striking the window and kicking the door before running to his own vehicle and driving off.
Reached by phone, Davey declined to comment and directed questions to his attorney. The lawyer did not respond.
Johnston said Davey should withdraw the lawsuit.
The case is “a false narrative to try and suction out millions of dollars on a completely bogus claim,” he said. “It is money from nothing, and there is, until recently, very little pushback and very little consequence to even getting caught doing it red-handed.”
Experts who study auto insurance say fraud would likely still occur under the governor’s proposal.
Martin Grace, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies the economics of insurance, said amending the no-fault system and capping payouts is a “rational” response to fraud.
“But will it solve all the problems in New York? I don't think that's probably the case,” he said.
“Nobody can defend the problem of staged accident fraud,” Consumer Reports programs director Chuck Bell told WNYC’s “All Things Considered” earlier this month. On the other hand, he said, “It could hurt consumers and accident victims in some cases if you go too far with those things.”
“There’s some pretty big players throwing their weight around that want to try to boost their own profits, and so that’s something we have to watch very carefully,” Bell said.
State lawmakers are currently reviewing Hochul’s auto insurance proposals and will release their own budgets next month. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters in January that he expects the issue to be one of the biggest sticking points between the governor and the Legislature.
And the speaker, who wields immense power in budget negotiations, hinted he sees the issue differently than Hochul.
“The governor is trying to deal with a problem, but I also know that we don't want to leave victims of accidents without being duly compensated,” Heastie said.
