India: Mumbai Police bust inter-state gang selling fake e-insurance policies

Mumbai: The Mumbai Cyber Police have bust an inter-state gang allegedly selling fake online life insurance policies of various prominent companies and cheating people of huge amounts, an official said here on Tuesday.

According to a complaint by an aggrieved person, during the lockdown period between June 2020-March 2021, some persons claiming to be representatives of insurance companies contacted him and lured him with attractive offers.

The tentacles of the fraud are spread across Maharashtra, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi states. The accused are Bani Singh and Vijay Mehta of Bharti AXA insurance and Deepak Dube, Sneha and Pooja of PNB MetLife snsurance.

They sold him an online policy and sent the policy documents from the purported email of bhartiaxa@aol.com, claiming that they were authorised representatives of IRDA in Hyderabad.

The cheats further lured the complainant by offering benefits of Rs720,000, plus an interest free loan of Rs120,000, lifelong pension, and forced him to deposit Rs190,000.

Realising that he had been duped by the alleged insurance agents the victim approached the Mumbai Cyber Police, North Region which got cracking onto the case. Investigations unravelled the huge scam spread across at least five states - Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra - using fake SIM cards acquired in the name of genuine customers by misusing their KYC documents submitted with mobile card retailers.

The Cyber Police also learnt that some of the accused have similar police cases registered against them in Lucknow, UP and other places and further probe is on to unravel the nexus of the gang in other states selling such fake online insurance policies.

Till date, the police have arrested six persons and sealed two accounts with Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank, seized at least five mobile phone and several fake SIM cards.