Yesterday, the State Department officially designated the violent gang MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization. While this designation highlights the gang’s extensive criminal operations, it’s important to recognize that gangs like MS-13 have been linked to a wide range of illicit activities, including exploiting the legal system with a disturbing rise in staged car accidents used for insurance fraud.

MS-13 members have been recruited specifically to fake injuries from these accidents. From the New York Post:

MS-13 leaders provide a pipeline of Hispanic migrants, some who are brought to New York specifically to fake injuries, sources said. They said the gang ropes in unsuspecting border crossers with offers to drive them to the city, pay for meals and provide spending cash before pressuring them into phony accidents.

Gangs like MS-13 are not acting alone. They team up with Russian-led operations that specialize in this type of white-collar crime. A former NYPD supervisor noted, “The Russian-MS-13 partnership ‘is a perfect marriage for them.’” This collaboration between street-level gangs and more experienced criminal networks is a growing problem in the insurance industry, and it highlights the increasing complexity of organized crime.

The schemes are complex yet simple when broken down:

The racket typically involves a healthy person taking a seemingly minor tumble on the street or at a construction site, then claiming a devastating injury that requires multiple surgeries. A crooked surgeon fuses healthy vertebrae with screws and plates, leading to a lawsuit against a business or landlord or both. Settlements start at $1 million each but can go much higher.

It doesn’t stop there, as Russians and MS-13 gang members rope more into their schemes:

These scams rely on law firms that take on hundreds of such cases, along with high-profile doctors, sketchy lending firms that hard-sell migrants into borrowing to cover the costs, and an army of ‘runners’ who recruit victims and orchestrate their falls, according to legal papers and sources familiar with the mix of schemes.

While MS-13’s criminal activities are broad and violent, the gang’s shift toward financially motivated crimes like abusing the personal injury legal system demonstrates a disturbing trend in their operations. With the State Department Foreign Terrorist Designation, law enforcement will now have more teeth to combat MS-13 and their wide range of illegal activities, including widespread insurance fraud schemes that exploit consumers and drive up costs for every American.