I stopped my mom from getting scammed in a staged (fake) accident

Location: California

My mom was parked nose-first at a shopping center where the parking spaces are diagonally opposed. As she was backing up to exit, a young-ish man parked directly opposite of her, rushed out of his parked car, screaming and accusing her hitting his car. He tried to pressure her to pay $10,000 to settle things right then and there or else he would have her arrested. She immediately called me distraught and in tears. I could hear him screaming at her.

I told her not to apologize or make any statements, and take pictures of his car, plate, drivers license, face and insurance card, and exchange phone numbers. Then a local patrol PD officer appeared, who was apparently friends with the screaming man. Mom asked the PD to take an incident report since the guy was claiming more than $750 in damage but PD flat out refused. He also claimed to have seen mom hit the other car and encouraged her to pay the man. (??!!)

I go over to mom's to check her dashcam footage. Zero contact and absolutely no damage.

They were also insured by the same carrier. (Mom has low deductible comp + collision + high limit umbrella).

Then I look at her phone - the guy bombarded her with 10+ text messages on the same day - carrying on about the (non-existent) damage, how he she better pay now, criminal charges, etc. I muted his texts, instructed mom not to respond, and reported the incident to the carrier right away.

Carrier contacts mom to set up an interview and a third party car inspection. All goes well and we sent the cam footage, text messages and pictures.

In the meantime, I independently discovered the man owned a body shop close to scene of the "accident" and found Facebook photos of him and the same PD at social events, then forwarded the info to the carrier.

We reported the PD to his sergeant.

Not surprisingly, the carrier closed the case in mom's favor. Shortly after that, carrier's SIU reached out to mom and told her she might be contacted in the future.