Woman Alleges Insurance Scam After Video Showed Car Backing Into Her Vehicle

A Queens, New York, woman alleged that a road collision on Wednesday, Oct. 16, involving her car and another vehicle captured on dash cam video was staged as part of an insurance scam.

Ashpia Natasha posted the footage of the incident on her TikTok that has since generated 66 million views as of Tuesday, Oct. 22. In the caption, she wrote that she was driving on the left lane of the Belt Parkway heading eastbound towards the Southern State Parkway. 

As seen in the clip, a silver Honda in the middle of the lane cut in front of Natasha’s vehicle, prompting her to hit her car brakes. The Honda then immediately backed into the front of Natasha’s car, slamming it. 

“Oh my God!” Natasha could be heard telling her husband on speakerphone, according to the dash cam video and reported by local affiliate WPIX. “What is he doing?…I got into an accident.”

Natasha later wrote in the TikTok caption: “I did not hit their car and because of that they reversed into my car for collision and acted as if they were injured while coming out of their vehicle.”

As seen in the dash cam, a total of four people emerged from the Honda looking shaken up from the collision with Natasha’s car. They also appeared to be recording the damage with their phones. 

Natasha recalled what happened next to Good Morning America after the collision: “I just proceeded to treat it like an accident. You know, I asked them if they were okay. We were able to exchange information. The guy in the video, he told me that the female was the driver and she doesn’t speak any English.”

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But the footage later revealed, upon closer inspection, the backseat passengers in the Honda appeared to be covering the back window with a tarp while the driver went over to the front passenger side and then came out allegedly injured, ABC affiliate WABC reported. 

Natasha told GMA that the Honda riders were in a hurry to leave, saying, “They were like, ‘Well, we have to go. We have to go pick up our baby.’ And so basically when I turned around to go check on the car, they just, like, got in their car and left.”

She later wrote on her TikTok caption that she believes the incident was a setup to make it look like Natasha hit the Honda for “insurance fraud purposes.” 

“The first three passengers exit the car pretending to be hurt, while the fourth passenger who was driving slips out through the passenger seat and gets into a second vehicle,” Natasha wrote. “That second vehicle…was following me from behind and keeping distance so they wouldn’t slam into me.”

Natasha later wrote on her TikTok that she reported what happened as an accident to the police, but was told that they don’t respond if no one was hurt and if the parties involved willingly exchanged information. 

“I watched the video multiple times and that’s when it hit me that, oh my God, this is probably a setup,“ Natasha, whose car suffered $8,000 in damage that will be covered by her insurance, told WPIX. “I’m pretty furious. I didn’t think that this was a thing.”

In an email to PEOPLE on Oct. 22 about the incident, a New York City Police spokesperson said that the investigation “remains ongoing by the NYPD Criminal Enterprise Investigation Unit’s Fraudulent Collision Investigation Squad.”

PEOPLE contacted Natasha on Oct. 22 for additional comment.