Queens, New York Car Insurance Fraud Dashcam Video

Submission 820

Part of a series on Viral Videos. [View Related Entries]

About

Queens, New York Car Insurance Fraud Dashcam Video refers to a viral video showing an alleged insurance scam attempt after dashcam footage showed a driver of a silver Honda Civic purposely backing his car into a woman's vehicle with several people exiting and then recording the accident on their phones. The incident occurred in mid-October 2024 in Queens, New York, gaining viral attention on the internet in the following days as more information about the scam's perpetrators surfaced online.

Origin

On October 16th, 2024, TikTok^[1] user @ashpianatasha4 got involved in a road collision involving her car and another vehicle captured on dashcam video, which she later posted on her TikTok account on October 18th, alleging the accident was an "insurance fraud attempt," writing on the caption that they cut her 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."

The video (seen below) shows the dashcam footage of the front of her car and the alleged culprits reversing their car, a silver-colored Honda Civic until it hits the woman's vehicle. The post amassed over 68 million plays and 6 million likes in a week.

The woman in the car, Ashpia Natasha, later told Good Morning America^[2] on October 21st, 2024, that the incident involving her car and another vehicle was probably a setup for insurance fraud. The video (seen below) garnered over 250,000 views and 2,800 likes in three days.

Spread

The insurance fraud dashcam video quickly spread online, spawning discussions of other common car insurance scams and memes related to the alleged perpetrators of the viral video.

For instance, on October 23rd, 2024, the Instagram^[3] meme page @longislandmemess posted a video showing the alleged car used in the insurance fraud collision (seen below) with its windows broken and a cardboard writing "rats" on the car's back window. The video received more than 1 million views and 30,000 likes in a day.

X users also posted memes using still images of the dashcam video. For example, on October 23rd, 2024, X^[4] user @Motabhai012 posted a screenshot showing the individuals inside the car that reversed on the woman's vehicle (seen below), captioning the image with, "The moment he realized they’re going to jail." The post received roughly 2,300 likes and 40 reposts in a day.

Numerous reposts of the viral video also appeared on Reddit over the following days, including posts to the subreddits /r/dashcamgifs,^[5] /r/ImTheMainCharacter^[6] and /r/interestingasfuck,^[7] all of which gained tens of thousands of upvotes and comments each in roughly a week.

On October 22nd, 2024, footage of the vehicle used by the scammers being located on an unknown street was posted to /r/dashcamgifs,^[8] receiving over 64,000 upvotes and 1,500 comments in three days. The following day, the video showing the vehicle with its window broken and vandalized with a cardboard sign reading "RATS" on the rear window was reposted to /r/interestingasfuck,^[9] receiving over 45,000 upvotes and 1,800 comments in two days.

On October 24th, another clip was posted to /r/dashcamgifs^[10] depicting the silver Civic in the parking lot of an NYPD precinct, garnering over 25,000 upvotes and 1,100 comments in roughly one day (shown below).