Jumping in front of cars for insurance money helped some 1920s immigrants achieve the American Dream

America is the land of the free — and the home of people suing each other over frivolous lawsuits. This is the country where a woman once planted a severed human finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili — and then tried to sue the fast food chain. The woman was later arrested — but initially thought she could get away with her ‘chili-finger’ scam, because suing people is such a way of American life. That’s why the culture of ‘floppers’ is a clever criminal enterprise.

As they’re known in the trade, floppers, flim-flam-floppers, or flop artists have been a thorn in the side of insurance companies since the 19th century. As mentioned in the book Accidentally, on Purpose, one of the first documented slip-and-fall artists was a woman known as Banana Anna, who would plant banana peels on steam trains, “slip” on them, and fake injuries to rake in insurance money.

The 1950 report Exposing the Fake Claim Racket described a flopper as someone who’d “scout certain parts of a city for openings or defects best suited for causing an ‘accident,’ such as an open cellar door, a broken step, a defective sidewalk coal chute cover, or a broken vault light. Locating such a spot, the flopper will purposely get his foot wedged in a jagged crevice and pretend to fall.”

Jim Quiggle, director of communications for the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud says, “Flops are so easy to create. It requires so little expertise. How much skill does it take to sit on the floor and cry bloody murder at the top of your lungs?”

In the early 20th century, when New York was the promised land for those who newly arrived via Ellis Island, the story of floppers reads like an immigrant American dream.

In fact, the 1920’s were the Golden Age of flopping. And one of the masters of the form was a man named Daniel Laulicht, who along with his brother Benjamin ran the biggest flopper ring in New York City. Laulicht grew up a poor immigrant in the Lower East Side. According to city records, Laulicht was first arrested for flopping back in 1918, but that was just the beginning. Laulicht eventually became a flopping tycoon. Like something out of Once Upon a Time in America, at the height of his flopper ring, Laulicht had more than 30 people on the payroll, ranging from rogue doctors and lawyers to taxi drivers and so-called “victims.” Together they orchestrated scams citywide, to the point that the actual flopping part wasn’t even necessary.

“He faked accidents, but they were so good they never literally did the accidents,” says comedian and writer Susie Felber, who is also Laulicht’s granddaughter. “He had all the witnesses, he hired the actors, and then they would go to these doctors to get their injuries checked out…and the doctors were on the payroll. And the lawyers were in on the payroll. Everybody was in on the faking. So they were making serious bank.”

The advent of the automobile took the flopping operation to a whole new, entrepreneurial level, with one of the favorite practices of falling beside a passing automobile in a way that bystanders would think the victim was actually hit.

According to Brooklyn Daily Eagle articles from 1928, taxi and delivery truck drivers were paid off to turn in fake accident reports for Laulicht. Repair bills were faked. Mechanics were paid off. Floppers-for-hire would get paid $5 to visit the doctor under assumed names, for accident injures that never occurred. The more experienced would take up to 40 different medical exams under different aliases. And it was pretty easy for them to get a doctor’s note that verified these faux injuries, since the physicians were on the payroll as well. At times, the Laulicht brothers would even lend out their car to be used in fake accidents. At the height of his flopping ring, Laulicht had 13 different crooked lawyers on his team, filing fake accident reports to various insurance companies. One lawyer had 21 fake cases brought to him in the span of a year.

“Insurance companies simply paid out the claims because they were considered nuisances, rather than serious financial threats,” states Quiggle. “Pay this clown $5,000 to get them out of your hair, and they become someone else’s problem.”

The Michael Jordan of flopping was a man named Irving Fuhr aka “Fuhr the Flopper.” While working with Laulicht, Fuhr took an estimated 150 flops in a five month period, sometimes staging as many as 10 a day. For his services, Fuhr was paid $75 a week (about $1000 in today’s money).

Unfortunately, in the world of flop, all good things must come to an end: Laulicht and his flopping ring were eventually caught. “They were filing so many accidents that they apparently filed two accidents in two different parts of Manhattan with the same car,” says Felber. “The same car that they had registered crashed in downtown and uptown at the same time on the same day.”

What also brought down the ring was having some flop victims go to a doctor who wasn’t on the payroll. “Basically, a doctor put it together and said something’s not right here,” adds Felber. “These nervous girls can’t keep their injuries in the same place. And that kind of brought down the whole thing.”

Laulicht was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to three years in Sing Sing prison.

“He got out early from Sing Sing by ratting out all the other doctors and lawyers and exposing the flopper ring,” says Felber. “Maybe he served one year.”

After his release, Laulicht went legit and steered towards another vocation: he ended up becoming a very successful Bible salesman.

In modern times, Quiggle estimates that insurance fraud is a $80-billion-a-year crime. Still, with the proliferation of the internet and security cameras, it’s not an easy feat to pull off as it was back in Laulicht’s day.

“Insurance companies have databases that compile claims,” says Quiggle. “It’s easier to check and see if the same knucklehead has been trying to work over multiple insurance companies. By the 5th claim it looks good that you could have a serial scammer.”

Despite the technology, flopping still flourishes, and has expanded globally. Video of people throwing themselves in front of cars, largely in Russia and China, is an entire YouTube subgenre.

“Russia has gone crazy with flops. People don’t hesitate to stick their necks out on the line by simply walking in front of a moving car and rolling over the hood,” says Quiggle, who attributes the rise of floppers in Russia due to a somewhat lawless nature of the country, mixed with lower incomes that require a general need for more money. Quiggle also credits flopping for the rise of surveillance technology. “This is why Russia is practically leading the world in consumer dash cams. In direct response to flippidty-floppity flop artists who develop rubber limbs and learn how to roll all over hoods and on the streets without really breaking their bones,” he says.