Police bust gang involved in insurance fraud; four held

Gurugram: The Police busted a gang of four, who had allegedly duped over 150 people of more than ₹6 crore on the pretext of reviving their lapsed insurance policies in the last three months

Gurugram: The Police busted a gang of four, who had allegedly duped over 150 people of more than ₹6 crore on the pretext of reviving their lapsed insurance policies in the last three months. The 34-year-old alleged kingpin of the gang and his aide were arrested from East Azad Nagar in Delhi on Sunday.

Police bust gang involved in insurance fraud; four held

Police said that preliminary investigation revealed that the suspect had allegedly been running a call centre and had hired three female executives to make calls and get details of policyholders. The police said the gang members had allegedly recruited people who had experience in the insurance sector.

The suspects targeted victims between age of 50 and 70 years, said police.

The police said they arrested two of the suspects from Azad Nagar and Shahdra in Delhi on Saturday and on Sunday.

Police said the kingpin was identified as Sunil Kumar of Uttar Pradesh Delhi who had bought data from a Delhi based woman who used to sell 2500 contact details for ₹1000. He had data of more than 5 lakh victims which he had planned to target this year after increasing the executives in his call centre.

Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said that Kumar lived in a rented accommodation in Shahdra, and the other one was identified as Karan Saxena of Shahjhanpur in Uttar Pradesh, who lived in Azad Nagar in Delhi.

Sangwan said that on August 3, they had received a complaint from a retired principal of a government school in Palm Vihar who was duped of ₹50,000 on the pretext of having her expired insurance policy revived. “Victim shared all the details of her policy and the amount was transferred to three different bank accounts. The victim kept calling them for updates but the suspects misled her and gave excuses that the process was taking time. Later, they stopped taking her calls. When she contacted the insurance company, she realised she was duped and took the help of the police,” he said.

Jasvir Singh, station house officer of West Cyber Crime police station said the suspects were using different set of mobile numbers and used to target people across the county. “We started investigating and, based on technical surveillance, we reached the suspects and arrested four of them,” he said.

The police said that during questioning, the suspects revealed that they used to buy the data through insurance agents and executives in Delhi and NCR, and used the data to make calls to victims.

Sangwan said at least 150 victims have been identified by analysing their bank transactions, which also showed the gang’s bank accounts have allegedly received ₹6 crore. “We have recovered ₹31500, one laptop and 19 calling headsets from their possession, which were used in the crime,” he said.

Singh said the gang operated in an organised manner and had different members performing different tasks such as making calls, creating bank accounts with forged documentation and withdrawing cash.

The police said the crime team had been on the trail of this gang ever since they received a complaint from the former principal.

Sangwan said during questioning, they allegedly revealed that Kumar had formed the gang after leaving his insurance job last year and started a call centre after hiring nearly four call centre executives to make calls. “The gang used to hire women executives to gain trust of victims and had worked for insurance companies and had knowledge of the process and how to extract details of policies. They had the data of lapsed insurance policies as well,” he said.