Four held for forging death certificate of ‘alive and well’ man to claim insurance of ₹30L

The police on Thursday arrested four persons, including a former insurance agent, on charges of forging the death certificate of the chairman of a prominent university and attempting to dupe him and his family of insurance money of ₹30 lakh

The police on Thursday arrested four persons, including a former insurance agent, on charges of forging the death certificate of the chairman of a prominent university and attempting to dupe him and his family of insurance money of ₹30 lakh.

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The family is currently overseas and confirmed to HT that the chairman is doing well. They got wind of the fraud only when a claims surveyor visited their home in South City-1 for verification purposes on June 20 and the same day they alerted the police.

While there were four policies in the chairman’s name, with a total claim amount of ₹10.5 crore, police said the fraudsters had initiated the process to claim only one of the policies that amounted to ₹30 lakh.

After coming to know about the claim from the surveyor, the wife of the chairman complained to the police that a fraudulent insurance claim has been made on her behalf by impostors. “The data regarding my nomineeship in four insurance policies of my husband were leaked from the insurance company and resultantly, some nefarious elements hatched a plan to fraudulently dupe us of the insurance amount. It is outrageous how private and confidential data of this nature could be leaked by the insurance company and a proper investigation into it may kindly be undertaken,” she said in her complaint.

She said the suspects falsely registered the death of her husband with the registrar of births and deaths at the Sector 10 government hospital and forged cremation records to obtain a death certificate dated April 11.

Preet Pal Sangwan, the assistant commissioner of police (crime), said the family was fearful about the motives of the gang. “They were concerned over the safety of their personal information, which they said was in the hands of the fraudsters. They were apprehensive about falling victim to cybercrime such as hacking, counterfeiting of documents and data theft. So, we investigated all angles of the case,” he said, adding that the entire claims process was done online.

Sangwan said they tracked the duo who raised the claim using their IP address and mobile phone records available with the insurance firm. One of the suspects had stolen insurance policy documents during his stint with the insurance company, he said.

KK Rao, the commissioner of police, said based on details of the policyholder and nominee, they prepared a fake driving licence and Aadhaar card in the name of the nominee. “They used these fake documents to open an account with the help of their friend, an agent of a leading private bank in the city. They sent all documents to the claims department and were expecting to cash the claim within 10 days,” he said.

The suspects were identified as Rajnikant Kumar, the mastermind, who earlier worked with the insurance company, Durgesh Dubey, a call centre employee, Naval Kishore, who helped with the opening of the bank account, and Nitish Kumar, a Delhi-based property dealer. Another gang member, who arranged for the death certificate, has been identified and will be arrested soon, the police said.

Sangwan said the gang members created a fake email account in the name of the nominee and sent the forged documents to claim the insurance money from that ID. “Of the four suspects, two earlier worked with insurance companies and were aware of the claims process and the documents required. Physical verification is not mandatory for insurance claims of less than ₹40 lakh. Aware of this fact, the accused made one insurance claim of ₹30 lakh. However, they were unaware that the policyholder had multiple policies with the same company, amounting to ₹10.5 crore,” he said.

Once a policy claim with a death certificate is made, all other policies in the name of that person are merged into the claim application, following which the insurance company sends a team for physical verification. The fraudsters were unaware of the verification and the subsequent registration of an FIR at the Sector 29 police station.

“The accused in question were on a temporary role in the back office for few months through a third party (outsourced),” said a spokesperson for the insurance company, adding that as a process, when an insurance claim is made (after death), the company checks its records and merges all insurance claims of a policyholder.

This is done because the spouse/nominee may or may not be aware of all the insurance policies the policyholder had, or they might not have documents of all policies, the spokesperson explained.

A case under sections 419,420,424,463,465,467,468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 43 and 66B of Information technology ACT 2008 was registered at Sector 29 police station on June 21.

Sangwan said Kumar, a Jaipur native, moved to Gurugram in 2011 and in 2012, started working with an insurance company where he met Durgesh Dubey, who, at that time, was deployed in the back office of the insurance company. In 2014, Kumar moved to another insurance company where he worked till August 2019. In 2017, Dubey left the insurance company and started working with a call centre.

Nitish and Kishore were school friends, while Naval was an acquaintance of Nitish, the police said. “Durgesh was seeking funds for his sister’s wedding when Kumar approached him with a plan to make money by forging insurance claims,” said Sangwan.