He was one of several witnesses for the prosecution Monday in the third week of the criminal tria... Accident recalled at trial

He was one of several witnesses for the prosecution Monday in the third week of the criminal trial of six members of a Colonie family accused of staging nearly two dozen accidents to collect insurance money.

On trial are Joseph Houghtaling, 36; his brother, Frank, 32; their wives, Renee and Rhonda Houghtaling, who are 34-year-old twins; family matriarch, Donna Houghtaling, 58; and her daughter, Brenda Warner, 38.

Prosecutor Bradley Sherman is leading the jury, crash by crash, through what he has called a concerted effort by the defendants to rip off the system.

Earlier Monday, a Progressive Insurance adjuster testified that he alerted the company's special investigation unit on March 16, 1997, about another crash.

The adjuster, Kirk Field, said that after Frank Houghtaling reported he'd crashed his car into his father's Poplar Street garage in Colonie, Houghtaling insisted that the accident wrecked the garage and everything in it, including his brother Joe's motorcycle. But what caught his eye, Field recalled, was that Frank Houghtaling had purchased full auto coverage on a 12-year-old, 100,000-mile car just four days before the alleged crash.

This is cache, read story here