Motor insurance fiddles add another £30 to the cost of every policy, according to a fraud investigator.

Darren Hodgkinson spends his working life sieving the honest claims from the dishonest ones.

His job is highlighted in tonight's Cutting Edge documentary on Channel 4 entitled Scams, Fiddles and Honest Claims.

Top scams include spilling paint on worn out carpets to criminal gangs staging so-called 'crash for cash' collisions, whereby innocent motorists find themselves involved in staged accidents so that the organisers can claim insurance monies.

Mr Hodgkinson told the Daily Mail newspaper: "You do get a buzz, I'm an ex police officer... and being in a chase and catching the baddie, it's the same thing."

In one claim investigated on the programme, Mr Hodgkinson looks at a £13,000 burglary claim where hundreds of receipts are produced by the policyholder.

If only one item in a claim is found to be fraudulent then the whole claim can be thrown out.

It appears to be the week for insurance fiddles on television.

Last night's ITV 1 programme Honest, showed a group of employees in an insurance company colluding in multiple scams.

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