This sort of scam has been going on in California for decades; I first heard of it a long time ago, when a friend was a victim.

Now, though, with the advent of dashcams, it’s easier to prove it and even to find the perps:

A crew of bozos targeted unsuspecting drivers in a series of staged crashes on busy Big Apple highways — scoring more than $80,000 in insurance payouts before a viral video brought the fraud ring down.

Jaime Huiracocha, 53, and Victor Murillo, 34, will respectively serve at least one year and two years in prison after pleading guilty to insurance fraud charges, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced Thursday.

Katz credited the TikTok clip — of a Honda Civic brazenly backing into another vehicle on the Belt Parkway after a near-miss collision — shown to her by her 15-year-old son with jumpstarting the investigation that uncovered three crashes staged by Huiracocha and Murillo.

The guy on the right has a charming set of tattoos:

A commenter there points out that retrofitting a car with a dashcam isn’t all that expensive.

Here’s some more information:

Do Dash Cams Work in Older Vehicles?
In most cases, the answer is yes.

Modern dash cameras are designed to work independently of the vehicle’s factory electronics. They require only a few basic things to function properly:

a 12-volt power source
windshield mounting space
cable routing through the interior
Because nearly all vehicles include these components, dash cameras are compatible with the majority of cars manufactured since the early 2000s.

In fact, older vehicles sometimes make installation easier because their electrical systems are less complex than those found in newer vehicles.

You can get a decent dashcam for under two hundred dollars, apparently. And installing it typically costs another $100 to $250 (depending on the type; see this, for example). Whether you might want one depends on where you live and usually drive.