Gang running fake loan, policy scam busted; 11 arrested

To gain trust, the suspects sold policies of four major insurance firms and received 40 to 50% commission on each policy worth around ₹50,000 to 3 lakh

Noida: The Noida police on Tuesday busted a gang in Sector 16 that allegedly offered loans at zero percent interest rate and also sold insurance policies to secure the amount, officers said, adding that they have arrested 11 members of the group who duped thousands in the last three years.

Police said the suspects had been selling policies after scamming people for the past three years by buying personal data from local vendors. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo)

To gain trust, the suspects sold policies of four major insurance firms and received 40 to 50% commission on each policy worth around ₹50,000 to 3 lakh. Their arrests followed a tip off about such a call centre operating from Sector 16, said officers.

“On Monday, we arrested 11 people identified as Vikram Singh, Aman Kumar, Keshav Kumar Jha, Arman Chaudhary, all residents of Ghaziabad; Mohit Kumar, Firoz Khan, Rahul Kumar, Akshay Mishra, Pankaj Singh, all residents of Delhi; and Rahul Singh from Agra and Divya Singh from Noida,” said Noida’s deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Yamuna Prasad, adding that Vikram headed the call centre whose director Gaurav Joshi and his wife Neha are on the run.

Explaining their modus operandi, the DCP said they contacted people after buying their personal data and offered loans from ₹3 to 30 lakh at 0% interest rate. “If their target expressed interest in the loan, they asked them to insure the amount before proceeding further. On the pretext of insuring the money, they sold policies of four genuine major insurance companies and received 40 to 50% commission in return,” the DCP added.

“We have found data of over 100,000 people in physical and electronic form. They scammed thousands of people, and it was revealed that the turnover of their call centre was around ₹8 crore,” said a senior police officer involved in the investigation.

Police have recovered 43 landline, 21 mobile phones, five laptops, 61 SIM cards, and 10 files containing data on over 2,000 pages. A case under sections 318(4) (cheating), 319(2) (cheating by personation), and 61(2) (criminalconspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and IT Act was registered against the arrested suspects at Phase 1 police station, and efforts are underway to nab the directors, said officers.