Six persons were arrested on Monday for running a fake call centre racket in Zirakpur in which mainly senior citizens were targeted and defrauded of cash after being made to pay a “fee” to get their hands on what was claimed to be the maturity amount from insurance policies.
₹4 lakh and about 30 mobile phones were recovered from Yogesh Verma (38) of Dhakoli; Pranav of Ambala Cantonment; Manish Kumar Rai of Dera Bassi; Subham Bhardwaj of Sunny Enclave; Arjun Yadav of Sector-17, Panchkula; and Rakesh Kumar of Dera Bassi.
SIM cards of different service providers and 10 registers and diaries were also seized.
The call centres were busted after Nirmal Singh (83) of Sector 44 complained to the police that he had been cheated of ₹16.54 lakh by fraudsters who promised to send him ₹25 lakh that they claimed was the maturity amount of his insurance policy.
Nirmal Singh said he had received a mobile phone call in June 2020 and was told about an old insurance policy of ₹25 lakh that was maturing and that he had to deposit a fee and documents for the funds to be released.
Taken in by them, and after receiving several mobile phone calls, Nirmal Singh ended up paying ₹16.54 lakh to the fraudsters.
{{/usCountry}}Taken in by them, and after receiving several mobile phone calls, Nirmal Singh ended up paying ₹16.54 lakh to the fraudsters.
{{/usCountry}}A similar complaint was lodged later by Ajudhya Dass Rajpoot of Sector 42, who lost ₹2 lakh to fraudsters who promised to pay him the maturity amount of his Reliance Nippon insurance policy maturity.
Police said Yogesh Verma and Manish Kumar Rai were the masterminds of the operations and had set up the call centre. The other men were hired by them and given mobile phones to make the calls.
They targeted senior citizens who had purchased insurance policies from different companies and lured them to deposit the money to get a huge amount supposedly after their insurance policies matured.
The accused were produced in court on Tuesday and remanded to three-day police custody.
A case under section 419, 420 and 120B of IPC was registered in police station 34, Chandigarh.