A fake call centre that duped more than 1,000 people of crores by promising them bonuses on their matured insurance policies has been busted, the police said on Friday.
The accused in this case had set up a well-organised call centre and hired more than 50 people to make calls to unsuspecting victims. The most prominent among their victims was Dinesh Nijhawan, a director with the Ministry of Skill Development, the police said.
It was on the basis of investigation into Mr. Nijhawan’s complaint that the racket was busted.
Mr. Nijhawan had got an insurance policy from LIC in the name of his wife in 1994. The policy matured in 2014, after which he received the maturity amount. However, in October last year, Mr. Nijhawan received a call informing him that he was eligible for an extra bonus of Rs. 1.25 lakh.
Posed as LIC men
“Posing as an authorised representative of the LIC, the caller told him that the decision to award the extra bonus was taken to improve the company’s image,” said Vijay Kumar, DCP (West).
Mr. Nijhawan initially ignored the calls, but later fell for the offer. However, instead of giving the bonus, the caller urged the victim to invest more money for an increase in the bonus amount.
The victim, subsequently, deposited a total of Rs. 2.07 lakh in five instalments into three different bank accounts. It was when he did not receive any incentive, but was asked to deposit more money, that he realised he was being cheated.
A case was then registered at the Kirti Nagar police station, after which investigators tried to track the addresses on which the SIM cards used to make the calls were registered.
Nabbed from Uttam Nagar
The police also continued to raid offices in Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad before they tracked down the chartered accountant who got the fake call centre registered. Upon interrogation, the CA revealed the addresses of some of the offices the accused had set up. While this did not lead to any arrests, technical surveillance on the suspects came to the police’s rescue.
Om Prakash Ray and Manish Roy were finally nabbed from Uttam Nagar where they had allegedly set up another call centre. During interrogation, they said that they would steal data of prominent insurance companies like Reliance, Birla Sun Life Insurance and Shriram Life Insurance, etc., and use it to cheat people.
“They would usually float fictitious companies to open fake bank accounts before setting up call centres to trick people,” said the officer.
