A man seen in a viral social media video appearing to intentionally cause an accident in NY has been charged with insurance fraud.
The Lowdown
In yet another example of people doing the strangest things, a New York man is facing serious charges this weekend after a stunt in NY went viral not long ago.
What happened?
The man Maikel Martinez, 28, of Brooklyn, has been charged with a wide range of crimes related to the incident. He is seen in the screenshot from Tik Tok.
According to the case against him, he has been charged with criminal mischief, staging a motor vehicle accident, reckless endangerment, conspiracy and insurance fraud.
Prosecutors allege that he was behind another car that cut him off during the incident, only to in turn then slam on his brakes intentionally causing the crash seen in the video.
Insurance fraud attempt in Queens, NY 10-16-2024 PART 1 I was driving in the left lane of the Belt Parkway going East bound towards the Southern State Parkway. The silver Honda (LBB 8917) was in the middle lane, and they cut me off and slammed on the brakes coming to a full stop hoping I would hit them. I did not hit their car and because of that they reversed into my car for collision and acted as if they were injured while coming out of their vehicle. I believe the intention was to say I hit their car for insurance fraud purposes. They had a tarp covering the rear windshield which fell off once they hit my car. You can see the driver is a male wearing a hat and you can see him switching to the passenger seat as well as the movement of the car before anyone gets out. The first three passengers exit the car pretending to be hurt, while the fourth passenger who was driving slips out through the passenger seat and gets into a second vehicle. That second vehicle was a red KIA SUV (KJH 3340) which was following me from behind and keeping distance so they wouldn’t slam into me. The red KIA drove around and picked up the driver to get away. The remaining three people’s demeanor changed once one of them noticed the dashcam. They only came out of the car with their phones ready to record the damage to both cars. They were quick to ask for my insurance and quickly left after the exchange. I called the police at the time of the incident and reported it as an accident, and the police told me they no longer go to an accident if no one is injured and they are willing to exchange information. I did not realize at the time that the driver switched and left in another car or that it was a set-up as I was driving by myself, and everything happened so fast. #queensny#car#caraccident#exposed#newyork#brooklynny @nbcnews @abcnews @nypd @geico @allstate @pix11ny
