🐪 The Dearborn Insurance Jihad: How We Scammed Ourselves into Paying $5K a Year for Honesty

There was a time, not long ago, when Dearborn’s greatest export wasn’t shawarma or gossip—it was insurance claims.

Somewhere around the mid-2010s, a certain entrepreneurial spirit swept through the city. The same survival instinct that helped our grandparents negotiate down used BMWs on Craigslist evolved into a new art form: the accidental accident.

Two cousins “bump” into each other on Schaefer. One yells “YA ALLAH MY NECK!” before the airbags even finish deploying. The other quietly rehearses his victim statement. They split the check like they’re at La Pita. Everyone eats.

At first, it was genius. A few thousand here, a few thousand there—free money from faceless corporations that “deserve it.” Nobody got hurt (except for the occasional rear bumper and the collective moral compass). Insurance companies paid out like clueless wedding guests.

Then the hustle went viral.

Suddenly, Dearborn’s streets became the Nasdaq of fake fender-benders. Cousins, uncles, friends, “random witnesses” — all in on it. If your car wasn’t part of a staged crash, you weren’t networking hard enough. It became a local rite of passage, right up there with buying your first Charger or getting your first nose filler.

But here’s the thing about scamming a system: the system always adjusts.

Insurance companies started crunching numbers. They noticed that every “accident” report from 48126 looked like a family tree. They saw that claims skyrocketed, payouts ballooned, and somehow every single “collision” involved a leased Nissan Altima with a dent the size of an iPhone.

So they retaliated.

They didn’t argue. They didn’t even investigate. They just opened Excel, adjusted the “risk” column, and quietly transformed Dearborn into the most expensive ZIP code for car insurance in America—second only to Detroit.

Now the same uncles who bragged about their payout in 2018 are crying in 2025:

“Bro, my insurance went from $250 to $750 a month wallah this country is haram.”

No, habibi. This isn’t America’s fault. It’s math’s fault. It’s karma with a clipboard.

We tried to beat the system, but we forgot we are the system.

Every staged crash, every exaggerated claim, every “my cousin will fix it cheap just say it was totaled” moment… added up. And now everyone in the city’s paying for it, literally.

We’ve built a society where you need full coverage just to parallel park on Ford Rd. A minor scratch? That’s $3,200. A real collision? Might as well just apply for bankruptcy at the tow yard.

Meanwhile, the insurance companies are sitting in glass offices in Lansing, laughing over our collective stupidity. They didn’t need to investigate—Dearborn investigated itself.

We thought we were hustling the system.

Turns out we were hustling each other.

The fake accident money’s long gone. The premiums are forever.

So next time someone complains about “unfair rates,” remind them:

we created our own economy of fraud, got high on short-term wins, and woke up with a citywide hangover called “$5,000/year to exist.”

At this point, riding a camel might actually be cheaper.

At least the deductible’s just hay. 🐪

Truly,

Habib