SCM Law represented multiple defendants prosecuted during both of the “Dino” operations.
The original Operation Dino case, which concluded in 2015, saw 81 people prosecuted for their role in the multimillion-pound frauds. The offending centred around the use of vehicles in staged accidents so that fictitious or exaggerated car insurance and personal injury claims were made to increase pay-outs.
In terms of sheer evidence, the first “Dino” case included over 200 hours of police interviews, 800 still images, 16 insurance providers, 117 personal injury files, 8,000 exhibits, 1,120 witness statements, 34,000 pages of evidence and 50,000 pages of unused material. The task of examining the evidence, advising our clients on the contents of the evidence and preparing the case for trial took many months and thousands of hours of thorough preparation.
The second phase (Operation Dino II) was prosecuted in a similar vein to the original operation and contained similar quantities of evidence as the first Dino operation. The case involved additional insurance claims linked to the original investigation. The net effect of the prosecutions were that 96 defendants were convicted for offences including conspiracy to defraud and fraud by misrepresentation. SCM Law represented two defendants in the Dino II case and despite entering guilty pleas at a late stage, both received non-custodial sentences.