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Fake insurance agents held for impersonation,cheating elderly of ₹19.28 lakh
The senior citizen was sold fake policies worth ₹19.28 lakh and received confirmation sent from fake insurance company e-mail address and fake policy documents
The North Mumbai Cyber Cell on Monday arrested six persons from Uttar Pradesh for allegedly cheating a Mumbai based senior citizen by luring him into buying fake insurance policies, sold with the promise of big benefits and interest free loan in return.
Two of the accused are employees of a mobile SIM card retailer who misused identity documents of insurance sales executive for fraudulently activating SIM cards in their names. Their accomplices then made sales calls to the senior citizen posing as insurance agents and cheated him of ₹19.28 lakh, police officers said.
The senior citizen complained to the police that he received calls from “executives” of two different insurance companies in March 2021 and they lured him into buying policies in his grandson’s name, promising big benefits such as lifetime pension and interest free loan.
The senior citizen was sold fake policies worth ₹19.28 lakh and received confirmation sent from fake insurance company e-mail address and fake policy documents. The elderly was promised returns of around ₹71 lakh and interest-free loan up to ₹12 lakh, his complaint revealed.
After receiving the email, the victim approached the company’s Mumbai branch only to be told that no such policy had been issued in his grandson’s name, the police said.
The Kandivali resident then approached the Cyber crime unit at Samta Nagar in Kandivali east, following which, a case of cheating was registered and a probe started.
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The probe revealed that the SIM cards used by the accused were activated from a shop in Uttar Pradesh. A police team then arrested two employees of the shop and apprehended their accomplices identified as Bani Singh, Vijay Mehta, Deepak Dubey, and Sneha Singh.
Police officers said the accused misused identification documents of an employee of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority ((IRDA) and an insurance company executive to obtain SIM cards in their name, which were used to call the Kandivali resident among others.
“We are now trying to find out how many more such SIM cards were activated by the employees of the shop at Gaziabad in Uttar Pradesh and how many more people have been cheated using this modus by the accused,” said sub-inspector S Thakur from Cyber crime police station.
