Shameful greed of America's Deep South: Hundreds of US companies file new, even more spurious claims for damages, using BP blaze to incinerate YOUR pension BP was forced to set up a compensation fund for Deepwater Horizon spill US companies exploit scheme by making bogus claims of damage This could hurt UK workers as many pension plans hold BP shares As the operator of a rundown motel at a truck stop on the motorway that slices through the "Frog Capital Of The World" - as Rayne, Louisiana, calls itself - Sam Ratanji may seem an unlikely candidate to become an overnight millionaire. The 60-year-old British immigrant from the Black Country runs the 51-room Best Western Rayne Inn in the isolated town with a population of 7,953, surrounded by rice paddies. Battered regularly by tornados, and with its original trade - selling frogs legs from the swamps to New Orleans restaurants - in sharp decline, the town was fast sinking into poverty until a new and unexpected source of income came their way: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of May 2010, and a compensation industry that just got a whole new lease of life. Disaster: The fire aboard the mobile offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 Never mind that Mr Ratanji's adopted hometown is some 200 miles north of the Gulf waters where the BP rig exploded. Because, as he and just about everyone who can read a newspaper in the town is very well aware, the multi-billion-pound battle for BP's cash has taken a disturbing, and potentially very lucrative, turn. In the past few months, a legion of improbable claimants has emerged, clamouring for substantial payouts thanks to a set of rules which appears to give credence to the flimsiest of claims. Landlocked businesses which have never seen a tourist or a fishing boat - including doctors" surgeries, law firms and schools - have been told they are owed hundreds of thousands, and in several cases millions, of dollars from a new compensation fund that BP was obliged to set up last December. And the company is worried - so worried that it has lodged an emergency appeal in the US Federal Court, warning that it will be "irreparably harmed" unless the procedure for assessing whether businesses were damaged by the spill is drastically reformed. Sign here: A BP mobile claims office in Chalmette, Louisiana, one of several places where US businesses and private claimants have explored the generosity of the compensation scheme The oil giant has even appealed to David Cameron and George Osborne to raise the issue at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland next week. But workers in Britain should also be concerned. An estimated one in seven major pension plans holds BP shares, and hundreds of millions - perhaps billions - could be wiped from their value if BP becomes unable to continue paying dividends at the same rate and becomes a target for a takeover. None of which bothers Mr Ratanji. "We're working with an attorney out of Houston and we've sent in a bunch of profit and loss statements," he said. Thousands of people like me are suing BP, mostly businesses. They have billions set aside for this. I keep telling my friends, "It's like the lottery. You could win." " It's impossible to underplay the devastating impact of the Deepwater Horizon spill. It was the largest marine disaster in history. Nearly five million barrels of oil spewed into the seas south of New Orleans, threatening the livelihoods of the fishermen and hoteliers who relied on the sea. And 11 people lost their lives. BP quickly established a vast £13 billion settlement fund to compensate the hundreds of thousands who had genuinely been harmed. Now, three years on, capping the flow of claims is proving harder than it was to seal the well itself as lawyers turn the disaster into a full-time industry, with an endless supply of thinly documented complaints. At Christmas, BP signed a new 1,000-page Economic And Property Damages Settlement Agreement designed to ensure that the company would be responsible only for legitimate claims, and promptly set aside a further £5 billion. But BP had bargained without the Louisiana court system and a septuagenarian in a white suit. At 74, Patrick Juneau is one of the state's most powerful lawyers and is the claims administrator appointed by the New Orleans branch of the Federal Court to oversee the compensation fund. With him, BP claims, has come an interpretation of the rules that means that a businessman living virtually anywhere in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, as well as parts of Florida and Texas, merely needs to show that his profits dipped after the spill in order to receive potentially huge awards. There is no requirement to show that the dip in profits had anything to do with the spill, nor do the businesses need to be in the red. Indeed, companies that are earning millions have been approved for awards. BP says that a fund that it designed in good faith "to compensate injured parties" has been turned into a "travesty" by the lawyer who is draining its coffers dry. Long clean: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is the worst in US history and three years later it seems BP has only just begun to pay back for its mistake Nearly 41,000 claims with a value of more than £2 billion have already been approved by Juneau. Famed for his impeccable Southern manners and crisp poplin business suits, he has rejected a mere 16 per cent of the hard-luck stories pouring into the three floors of offices which he has taken over near New Orleans's French Quarter. At that rate, BP estimates that it will have to pay out a total of £8.5 billion - more than £3 billion over what it has budgeted for. Juneau says that the formula he is using corresponds precisely to the settlement agreement, which doesn't require any "subjective" assessment of whether claimants really were harmed by the spill. He has dished out money to lawn care services, self-storage warehouses, clothing shops and car repair garages. Churches and private schools also are eligible for BP largesse, he has declared. Proprietors are being informed that they may arbitrarily pick and choose the time periods in which they record their revenues and expenses so as to claim they have made a loss. "If you meet that economic test, then you're eligible for payment," Juneau announced. There are literally thousands and thousands of businesses that are eligible. Juneau has openly encouraged businessmen to file claims even if they are not certain that they have any entitlement. "It doesn't cost a nickel to file a claim," he said. If you're not eligible, we'll tell you. This kind of opportunity has never been afforded our region. It would be a shame if people looked back at this thing and said, "We didn't know." " In one much-publicised example, a farmer who claimed £1.8 million is said to have shuffled his book-keeping figures so as to make it look as if his income in November 2010 plunged 91 per cent. According to BP, this was nothing but an accounting trick: he recorded the bulk of his 2009 revenue in November but, in 2010, he showed it as received a month later. BP has already agreed to pay £6.2 million to a construction company in northern Alabama, almost 200 miles from the Gulf, which does no business in the region, and for which 2010 was its best year on record. "BP has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars - soon likely to be billions - for fictitious and inflated losses," the company says in its appeal. It has begged the Prime Minister to intervene over the escalating cost, contending it is based on Juneau's "capricious" whims. Such claims, the company says, make a "mockery of what was intended to be a fair and honest court-supervised settlement process." Losses made: Crosses with descriptions of things potentially lost to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill on display outside a home in Louisiana after the disaster BP no doubt accepted that settling sometimes dubious claims would be a small price to pay for desperately needed goodwill - but not that taking it to the cleaners would become a major industry in the Gulf states. The first compensation fund, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility set up in June 2010, was aimed largely at helping individual victims and was supervised by respected Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who presided over awards for victims of the September 11 attacks. Mr Feinberg admitted he was stunned at the compensation culture that sprang up almost overnight. He approved about 1.2 million claims, totalling £4.2 billion, but asked the FBI to investigate another 4,000, which he said he suspected were fraudulent - a figure he suggested might be an underestimate. During a visit to one remote fishing peninsula in the Gulf soon after the spill, it seemed that virtually everyone I encountered was bragging of ripping off BP. A high school student said: "I've asked for $2,500." A New Orleans bus driver said: "I got $2,000 and I wasn't even living here in May 2010." A 51-year-old Louisiana entrepreneur, Bay Ingram, was convicted in April of fraudulently claiming £900,000 from BP by fabricating flight logs for a helicopter called "Sheriff One" that was supposedly being used for the clean-up. Three years after the spill, the once-scruffy and impoverished townships that dot the Gulf have been transformed. Large villas are being built in fields that were previously used by fishermen to supplement their income by keeping herds of malnourished cattle. A sign outside a new supermarket on a peninsula overlooking the spill zone advertises "Hybrid sushi - Traditional Style Sushi with a Modern Twist." Rolexes are on display at a jeweller and a clinic is advertising orthodontic treatments. This prosperity is due in part to the Obama administration's decision to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling imposed after the disaster. Former shrimpers have been recruited for highly paid work on the rigs. But a local tax accountant, Josefina Guerrero-Fondaw, said much of the new wealth is the result of an ever more outrageous culture of fraud: "To me, it is BP that is becoming the victim," said Ms Guerrero. I have seen tax returns for sole proprietors who have made claims for between $5,000 (£3,000) and $120,000 (£80,000) even though they never made anything like that. Danger: Three years after the Deepwater Horizon spill, claims are still coming in against BP, possibly harming British workers' pensions There is no public record of who has received compensation from BP, and the claimants are not rushing to own up. One rice mill is described in BP's court documents as receiving £13.5 million. The speculation is that it is the Louisiana Rice Mill company, a leading supplier to Kellogg's and located a few miles from Rayne. The mill's chief executive officer and co-founder is 42-year-old former banker Bobby Hanks. He has proudly claimed that the mill is earning revenues of almost £130 million a year. We visited his office, where there were Kellogg's packages in a showcase and framed articles about the mill's business success. A receptionist said that Mr Hanks had left for a holiday. The Mail on Sunday found him taking drinks with wife Mollie and a guest by the swimming pool of their large ranch-style house. He came to the door and expressed surprise when we showed him the pages from the lawsuit that appeared to identify his business as a major claimant against BP and asked: "Are you working for BP? I'm not at liberty to talk about anything. This multi-billion-dollar company, BP, is going to go out of business? I don't think so," he said. "I haven't received one dime from BP," he continued, repeating the line several times. I asked him if he was saying he had made no claim against BP. "I didn't say that," he replied, and our brief meeting was over. Across the road from Mr Hanks's office is a small rice mill owned by 37-year-old Robbie Trahan. He confirmed that he has been invited to slap a claim on BP. There are attorneys all over the place, asking everyone and their brother to bring claims. The way they say it, it doesn't matter if you were affected by the spill," he said. If you're in the rice market, with prices going up and down, you certainly can show you lost revenue. I think it's dirty, to be honest. I have had a lot of people asking me to do it. I didn't want to. But if it's as easy as everybody says, BP is going to pay a lot of money. And so will we.