Written by: Express News Service
3 min readNew DelhiMay 1, 2013 02:49 AM IST
First published on: May 1, 2013 at 02:49 AM IST
Three persons were arrested on the charge of duping over 700 people by inducing them to purchase policies after stealing their data from a prominent insurance company. The insurance firm claimed it incurred a loss of Rs 90 lakh as a result. The arrests were made by Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police.
The arrests were made following a complaint filed by ICICI Prudential on March 3,which said fraudsters had managed to steal their customer records and cause a loss of over Rs 90 lakh.
Joint Commissioner of Police (EOW) Sandeep Goel said the fraudsters made hundreds of calls to policy holders after managing to get hold of the customer database,inducing them to put money in certain accounts to avail bonus and providing wrong information about their policies.
The three accused have been identified as Ankur Goyal (23),Praveen Yadav (26) and Pradeep Yadav (28).
The company told police that 712 customers had complained to them about the fraudulent calls.
“They used to make phone calls using unofficially accessed customer details and dupe the victims by impersonating as representatives of insurance companies or IRDA and,thereby,inducing their customers to purchase policies which they would not have purchased otherwise,” Goel said.
Of the 100 victims questioned,as part of investigations,about 30 told investigators that they had issued cheques after they were promised a bonus.
Goel said an 81-year-old woman,one of those duped,was approached by the accused,who told her that they would get her husband’s investment validated and she was induced to issue cheques amounting to Rs 26 lakh.
“Later on,she came to know that two insurance policies with forged documents had been issued and that the entire amount had been misappropriated,” Goel said.
Investigators later learnt that the two policies amounting to Rs 2 lakh were issued in her grandson’s name,allegedly by Ankur,by fabricating the documents of her grandson. ICICI Prudential had said: “Eight insurance policies have been discontinued and 48 policies were surrendered by our customers,resulting in a loss of Rs 90,93,188 to the company due to illegal actions.”
“In order to prevent such frauds in future,public is hereby advised to verify the credentials of persons approaching them as agents or employees of any insurance company/mutual fund/other agency before making any investment through them,” Goel said.
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