Delhi gang cheats over 3k insurance policyholders, four arrested

The men called policyholders by posing as Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officials, they said. Prashant Gautam, DCP (IFSO) said the gang prepared forged documents of the Ministry of Finance bearing the signature of Sitharaman, RBI regional director and other officials. “They used to collect data from insurance companies and accordingly target the victims by sending forged documents,” the DCP added.

The matter came to light after the finance ministry approached the Delhi Police Commissioner about the fraud and impersonation following which the police found a forged letter and several complaints. In one of the complaints, a man stated that he received a call from a person who posed as a senior RBI official. The accused told him that some amount had been sanctioned against his lapsed policy.

“The victim was asked to provide his email ID. He later received a fake RBI email saying he will receive Rs 12 lakh. The caller asked him to pay Rs 44,000 as processing charges. When he paid the amount, he was again asked to pay Rs 27,000 as NOC charge. The victim then received a forged cheque of Rs 12 lakh via post. The accused then asked him to pay Rs 52,000 as the final fund release charges to get the cheque amount. In total, the victim was cheated of Rs 1.2 lakh,” said the police.

A team was formed to check all such transactions and phone details. After several raids, the police caught Mehtab Alam and his associates. They also recovered a data sheet of the victims which has up to 3,000 entries. “They used to call the insurance policy holders posing as officials from Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), RBI and finance ministry and lured them on the pretext of providing maturity amount against their existing/lapsed policies,” the DCP said.

“In order to convince the policyholders, they used to send mails from email IDs similar to that of government institutions with forged documents seemingly issued by the RBI, Ministry of Finance and IRDA. They also used to send forged cheques to the victims by post in order to induce them… The accused would withdraw the cheated amount from different locations in Delhi,” he added. Officers said they are looking for other associates.