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5 dupe over 100 people by posing as executives of insurance companies, arrested
The police on Tuesday busted a gang of five persons, including three women, for allegedly duping over 100 people of more than ₹4 crore on the pretext of payment
The police on Tuesday busted a gang of five persons, including three women, for allegedly duping over 100 people of more than ₹4 crore on the pretext of payment of premium their insurance policies. The police said the gang used to operate from a moving car. As such, the police could not locate their location.
The police recovered five mobile phones, three laptops, 12 cheque books of various banks, 10 registers, 10 passbooks from their possession. The suspects have been identified as Amir Khan, Abhishek alias Golu, Sandhya Sharma, Sonali Srivastava and Neha Singh, all residents of Delhi. The police said Abhishek was the mastermind of the gang. He had allegedly started duping people in 2016 after he left the job of an executive of an insurance company.
The police started looking for the gang when Sube Khan, an undersecretary in the directorate of local urban bodies in Chandigarh, approached them on November 24 last year, stating that he had been duped of ₹90,000 in September by suspects who pretended to be employees of an insurance company.
Khan said he started getting calls in September last year after he skipped paying the premium of his term insurance “In September 2016, I bought a life term insurance policy, whose annual premium was due every year in September. I had paid a premium for two years consecutively. However, last year I forgot to pay the premium and went on leave to my home town in Nuh,” he said.
On October 4 last year, a woman, claiming to be the employee of an insurance firm, called and said that his premium was due and he would have to pay fine if he ignored the message and calls. “I received calls for three to four consecutive days, The callers told me the same thing and asked me to pay the premium on the given account number. Since I was in my village on November 19, I paid the premium of ₹90,000 online to the given account number,” said Khan.
The police said even after paying the premium he kept receiving calls. On November 23, Khan returned from leave and the following day went to the insurance office to know as to why they were troubling him despite paying the amount.
Khan said he was shocked when the insurance officers checked the account and confirmed that it did not belong to the company.
Preet Pal Sangwan, the assistant commissioner of police (crime), said that Khan approached the police and gave a detailed description of the incident. “The investigation was handed over to the crime investigation agency, Sector 17, and all the mobile numbers were shared with the team,” he said.
A case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 419 (impersonation), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged document as genuine) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code(IPC) and Section 66 of Information Technology(IT) Act was registered at the Civil Lines police station, on February 16.
The complainant told the police that after returning from the police station, he again received calls in which the executives informed him that the company was offering him a bonus of ₹3 lakh but he needed to pay ₹84,000 as processing fees which he refused.
The police commissioner Muhammad Akil said the police formed a team and involved their cybercrime investigators to probe the case. “During the probe, the police team took details from banks and the details of their cellphone numbers. The suspects used to switch off their mobile phones after making the calls but had the same mobile numbers which they used every day. The team reached the suspects at their Delhi location using technical surveillance on Tuesday,” he said.
Akil said they have duped more than 100 people from the records they have recovered but they are yet to ascertain exact details.
The two suspects were produced in the district and sessions court on Wednesday and were taken on two days of police remand. Three women were sent to 14-day judicial custody, said the police.
