When a driver with no insurance hurts your car...The State of Maryland covers the damage to your car with state insurance.

Sadly not the case in the UK, or probably most other places.

Factory undercoats are all pale grey, even if the car has black paintwork. That's the basic rust-protection undercoat that goes on all metalwork, and I believe the undercoat's naturally grey (no need to add colour when a topcoat's going on anyway).

If the picture's been emailed, that gives you the original file, which is good. To photoshop a picture such that examination of the file shows no evidence would take serious skill and lots of time - it's not impossible, but I suspect it'd be cheaper to write the car off than to dedicate that much time to the exercise! Simple paintwork scrapes could be doctored without spending too much time, but a complete "remodelling" of the side panels? not likely. Zoom in on the file and look for areas of suspiciously-similar pixel colour, but I don't think it'll happen. I think John and Scoville have it right - it's been damaged afterwards (either in a second accident, or deliberately to write it off for the money) and they're trying to screw you over.

Have you asked the shopping centre about security cameras? If there's a shot of their car leaving (or even better, of the incident itself) then you're in business. Of course, if it's months ago then you're probably SOL on that one.

Graham.