Four persons, who were part of a cyberfraud racket, have been arrested for allegedly posing as officials of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and the Insurance Ombudsman to dupe a man of Rs 1.3 lakh on the pretext of settling a pending medical insurance refund, police said on Tuesday.
Four mobile phones and a debit card, allegedly used in the crime, have been seized.
According to officers, K P Tomar, the complainant in the case, had bought four health insurance policies from Edelweiss last year. After being diagnosed with cancer, he was unable to continue paying the premiums. While refunds for three policies were processed through the Insurance Ombudsman and IRDAI channels, settlement was pending for the fourth despite two instalments having been paid.
On July 5, the complainant allegedly received calls from people who claimed to be officials from the Insurance Ombudsman. Investigators said the callers told him that his pending refund file had been taken up and that certain “processing charges” were required before it could be finalised. Tomar transferred Rs 83,000 to one bank account and Rs 47,000 to another. The callers later told him to arrange an RBI bond worth Rs 12 lakh for “final clearance”. Tomar lodged a police complaint after realising they were duping him. An FIR was filed on November 20 under sections 318(4) (cheating), 319(2) (cheating by impersonation) and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
A police team began analysing technical evidence, bank transactions and phone records. “Investigation revealed that the money first passed through two bank accounts, belonging to Simran and Manpreet Kaur, before being consolidated into a beneficiary account of one Devender Kumar. Multiple raids across Delhi-NCR resulted in the arrest of Devender from Bhajanpura. During questioning, he admitted to using accounts of his wife Simran and sister-in-law Manpreet to receive the money before routing it to his own account and later handing it to his associate Arun Kumar after keeping a commission,” said DCP South West, Amit Goel.
According to police, Devender worked in a company which deals with insurances, and thus had access to customer data. At his instance, raids were conducted in Seelampur and Arun was arrested. Police said Arun, who previously worked in firms dealing with credit cards and insurances, made the calls to the victims. Officers said he impersonated IRDAI and Ombudsman officials and used data supplied by Devender to target the complainant and other policyholders. Simran and Manpreet were also arrested.
Police said a probe is underway to determine if the accused were part of a larger syndicate.
