Investigators say while the number of such cases is unclear, they estimate hundreds of car torchings have happened in the Washington area in the last several years, The Washington Post reported Monday.

"With what's just happened to the economy in the last week," longtime fraud investigator Donald Galbreath told the newspaper, "I see the trend will get worse."

Insurance industry data indicate U.S. "potential owner give-ups," most of which involve burned cars, increased from 511 in 2004 to 986 in 2007. But those numbers represent only a "small percentage of the reality out there," Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau, told the Post.