When I first explain that insurance fraud costs over $45 billion per year, everyone I talk to is shocked. "How can the losses be so massive year after year?" they ask incredulously. "How is this even possible?!"

The Root of the Problem

The root answer: right now, it's just too easy for unscrupulous actors to exploit the system and get away with it.

Without detailed historical visual records of property conditions over time, there is minimal accountability. Attorneys and public adjusters are free to completely fabricate any narrative of "storm damage" they want, knowing carriers lack the concrete visual evidence to dispute or disprove the claims.

How the Fraud Typically Plays Out

Today, people are able to cook the books, attributing normal wear-and-tear damages (not covered by insurance) to recent storms in order to force carriers to overpay on fraudulent claims that add up to tens of billions per year across the industry.

Let me walk through exactly how one common roof manipulation scheme typically plays out, costing insurers untold billions annually in fraudulent overpayments...

The scam starts with someone we’ll call John. One morning, as John is finishing his coffee, there is a knock at his front door. He opens it to find a sharply-dressed man who introduces himself as Frank, a public insurance adjuster.

Frank offers to inspect John's roof for free to see if there is any damage that would qualify for an insurance claim to pay for replacement or repairs. John agrees and they walk outside to take a look.

Frank makes a big show of climbing up a ladder and scrutinizing John's roof, pointing out every single cracked tile or surface abnormality he can find. He declares there are several recently "cracked," "shifted," and "loose" sections he claims must be storm-related damage.

After the inspection, Frank sits back down with John in his living room. As if on cue, Frank glances up and notices there are a few small water stains on the ceiling above them. "Ah, see those ceiling stains there? Those are very likely from water intrusion coming through your now-damaged roof," Frank explains convincingly.

He goes on to declare that not only will John's insurance policy almost certainly cover the full cost of replacing the roof due to the supposed storm destruction, but that the policy’s “matching statutes” mean the insurer will also likely have to pay for repairing the interior water damage to walls, stains, and potentially entire room renovations “to match.”

To further sell the scheme, Frank then whips out a tablet and loads up historical weather data from CoreLogic (recently sold for $6BN), quickly finding a major wind storm event that had struck John's area about 3 months prior, with over 50 mph winds reported.

"See here, this is probably exactly when your roof originally got damaged by the heavy winds,” he states while pointing to the weather report, “which later caused these water leaks you’re now seeing on your ceiling.”

Frank goes on to confidently promise John that properly filing an insurance claim could easily result in a payout exceeding $100,000 between full roof replacement and repairing the interior water damages.

The Final Payoff

Barely a week later, Frank makes good on his word and formally submits a nearly $200,000 insurance claim on John's behalf, demanding the insurer cover the maximum for full roof replacement and major interior ceiling and wall repairs, which Frank attributes to “extensive wind damage.”

However, since the roof issues were actually just due to standard wear-and-tear over many years, the carrier outright denies the substantial claim, calling it out as pre-existing damages not truly caused by the recent storm.

But Frank was expecting this initial blanket denial from the outset. He immediately files a request for reconsideration highlighting the significant severity of the supposed storm destruction. For added leverage, Frank presents the historical CoreLogic weather data he had shown John earlier, using it as "proof" that a damaging and impactful storm did in fact strike right around the time the roof and interior damages were reported as the date of loss on the claim.

With no detailed visual evidence available to definitively disprove or counter Frank’s claims of significant storm-induced destruction, the insurer ultimately is forced to settle the claim in mediation. Despite the true insured damages being $0, the carrier ends up forced to pay out a total of $110,000.

The Vicious Cycle Repeats Itself Endlessly

And so this extremely lucrative process repeats itself literally thousands upon thousands of times every single year across the state and country.

The industry uses manipulated weather data to falsely yet convincingly connect normal wear-and-tear property damages to recent storm activity in order to grossly exaggerate or completely fabricate insurance claims.

The Staggering Bottom Line

This then forces carriers to consistently overpay out substantial six to seven figure settlement sums on individual claims that should never get paid in the first place. It all adds up to players fraudulently siphoning away $45+ billion from U.S insurers annually.

Finally - A Game Changer is Here

But finally, Drodat is here to help the insurance industry fight back and turn the tables on these fraudsters through the immense power of visual data.

Our rapidly expanding aerial image database is documenting highly detailed visual records that conclusively showcase the full chronological condition history of a given insured property over time. We are quickly building an immense library of ultra high-resolution, time-stamped overhead photographs capturing every roof and exterior in entire city zip codes.

How Drodat Changes Everything

These comprehensive historical views now allow insurers to validate the legitimacy of incoming storm damage claims like never before. Insurance personnel can instantly search Drodat’s interactive visual database through our proprietary web portal by address to pull up detailed before-and-after side-by-side comparisons documenting the true extent of any destruction.

Let's revisit John’s earlier fraudulent claim example to showcase Drodat in action:

Drodat’s continuous aerial images would have shown documented proof that his roof was already significantly worn, damaged and improperly maintained for over 18 months prior to Frank’s supposed “date of loss” storm event that was fraudulently used as the catalyst for filing the huge insurance claim.

These earlier archived overhead photos conclusively expose Frank’s entire ploy to falsely attribute long-term wear-and-tear issues as newly occurring storm damages. The visual evidence timeline completely prevents the standard data manipulation tactics that today enable criminals to con billions from the insurance industry each year.

The Future Looks Bright

As Drodat continues rapidly expanding our unmatched statewide Florida property database in coming months, our proprietary aerial imagery and condition history records will soon transform insurance practices around pricing, underwriting, risk management, fraud detection and much more.

No longer will carriers be forced to endlessly pay out vast sums as victims of weather data being creatively weaponized against them by crafty fraudsters. Drodat finally levels the evidentiary playing field to benefit insurers through the unprecedented power of visual facts.

We’re currently working to close out an upcoming funding round backed by several strategic insurance investors in order to scale and accelerate data collection efforts as well as further boost collaborative insurer partnerships.

We welcome all potential investors who are passionate about joining our mission to completely disrupt age-old insurance fraud practices while simultaneously bringing fairness, efficiency and accountability back to this $800 billion industry. Please reach out anytime to discuss details on how we can collaborate.