A gang of fraudsters alleged to have swindled an insurance firm out of nearly 600,000 euros by staging bogus road fatalities has been smashed, police in Athens said yesterday.

Officers arrested the insurance firm’s legal adviser and a clerk as well as a doctor and a lawyer.

In the latest alleged case, the doctor reported a bogus road fatality in Preveza and presented himself as the guilty party. Compensation claims were then filed by 11 relatives of the non-existent victim. The lawyer drew up all the paperwork.

But the bogus documents aroused the suspicion of an insurance firm clerk, who alerted police. The firm was given a pre-marked 300,000-euro check to give to the lawyer, who was arrested. The other three suspects were then traced. A police search of the legal adviser’s office unearthed dozens of stamps belonging to magistrates and police chiefs.