Nassau County Police Get $385,000 From State Settlement

Attorney General Letitia James today presented the Nassau County Police Department with a check for $385,256 as part of a settlement agreement the state reached with LexisNexis Risk Solutions and several of its affiliates.

LexisNexis deliberately failed to pay multiple state law enforcement agencies agreed-upon fees — $900,000 in New York alone — for the resale of car crash reports, defrauding them out of more than $2.8 million. New York’s share of the settlement is approximately $1.7 million, or 30 percent of the total $5.8 million multistate settlement.

“LexisNexis cheated our local law enforcement agencies and defrauded New Yorkers,” said James. “Through our legal action, we were able to secure more than $1 million for our law enforcement — the bedrock of safety for our communities. I am proud to deliver resources to the Nassau County Police Department and others across the state. We will not tolerate deceptive business practices that cheat New Yorkers.”

As part of the settlement, the Attorney General’s Office is providing funds to 121 local law enforcement agencies throughout New York that were denied rightful payment. Law enforcement agencies generate reports of car crashes, which are purchased by individuals and insurance companies for use in claims adjustments. Companies enter into agreements with law enforcement agencies to obtain crash reports and resell them to customers, agreeing to pay a fee to those agencies every time a report is sold.

LexisNexis defrauded law enforcement agencies by paying them for only the first copy of a crash report sold, and not for each subsequent report resold, as their contracts required. The investigation found that from June 2012 through May 2019, LexisNexis fulfilled customer crash report requests by searching its database and — if it had previously sold the requested report to another customer — would resell the report without paying the contracted agency its agreed-upon fee for the new sale. LexisNexis would then omit the new sale from reports of sales it was contractually obliged to provide to the agencies. As a result, LexisNexis generated monthly reports for the agencies that falsely understated total crash report sales, and deprived New York State law enforcement agencies of sales fees they were entitled to receive.

“Our brave law enforcement officers will be better equipped to keep us save thanks to this settlement victory,” said Nassau County Executive Laura Curran. “We are grateful to Attorney General James for her continued defense and advocacy on behalf of our residents.”

The investigation began after New York State, and the additional parties involved in the settlement, received information from a former LexisNexis employee who came forward as a whistleblower and filed a report under the New York False Claims Act and the acts of the other jurisdictions involved. The New York False Claims Act allows private persons to file civil actions on behalf of the government, and to share in any recovery.

"We are pleased to have reached a resolution of the investigations by several jurisdictions over the resale of automobile accident reports," LexisNexis Risk Solutions said in a statement. "We had a disagreement over the meaning of contract language regarding when certain payments were due to law enforcement agencies after crash reports were purchased and then resold. Although we disagreed with the interpretation of the contracts by the jurisdictions, ultimately we decided that rather than litigate, we would settle our disagreement in a way that benefited our law enforcement partners. We want to emphasize that this was not a case about fraud by any LexisNexis entity, and the settlement agreement includes no admission of wrongdoing or liability on the part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, LexisNexis CopLogic Solutions and LexisNexis Claims Solutions."