Imagine you’re an insurance investigator and you get a call about a run-of-the-mill water damage claim: a sunroof opened during a thunderstorm, and the car flooded. It seems like an open-and-shut case. But when you arrive to inspect the BMW, something feels off. The weather report shows barely any rain, yet the car’s interior is soaked. That’s just the beginning of the wackiest insurance fraud cases you’ve ever seen.

The claim came from a New Jersey driver who owned a 2011 BMW 550i. According to the Autoinsurance.com website, this driver reported a heavy rainstorm had caused their sunroof and windows to malfunction, flooding in the car’s interior. And the carpets were indeed soaked with water still pooled on the floor. The driver added that the electronics were damaged, and the car wouldn’t start. All of this led to a comprehensive claim for water damage. But, Pete Galassi, the special investigations unit manager for Mercury Insurance, had some additional questions.

Upon arriving at the scene, Galassi immediately noticed inconsistencies. First, while the carpets were damp, there were no signs of the kind of debris you’d expect from a storm. No leaves, no mud, no hint of floodwater smell. Instead, the water appeared suspiciously clean. More odd, when he turned the key in the ignition, the BMW started right up. The windows and sunroof, which were supposedly malfunctioning during the storm, operated without any issue. What should have been straightforward water damage was beginning to look like something else entirely.

Then there was the weather itself. Galassi pulled the weather report for the day in question and discovered only minimal rainfall in the area. It certainly wasn’t enough to explain the level of water damage the driver was claiming. At this point, Galassi began to suspect foul play. The more he investigated, the more the pieces started to fit into a pattern. So he sent some of the water in the car away to forensics. The water in the BMW wasn’t from rain at all—it was tap water. This was no accident. Someone had deliberately filled the car with water in an attempt to defraud the insurance company.

As Galassi dug deeper, another piece of the puzzle emerged. This wasn’t the first time the car’s owner had been connected to an odd insurance claim. The previous year, the driver’s boyfriend’s mother had filed a similar claim, saying her car had been damaged by snow after she left the windows open during a storm. Two claims involving weather-related damage, both from the same family, both with suspicious details? It became clear that this wasn’t an unfortunate accident.

Why would someone go to all this work to trick an insurance company? According to Galassi, “The insured had stated her BMW was worth $46,000, but the bill of sale showed it was actually purchased for $29,000…Needless to say, the insured’s claim was denied.”