Three graduates were arrested here for allegedly duping around 700 people by inducing them to purchase policies after stealing their data from a prominent insurance company, which claimed they incurred a Rs 90 lakh loss due to the fraud, police said today.
One of the victims of the gang was an 81-year-old woman, the wife of a 1971 war veteran who was awarded Mahavir Chakra and mother of an Army officer who lost his life in Jammu and Kashmir during an Army operation at the time of insurgency.
The arrests came following a complaint filed by ICICI Prudential on March 3 that fraudsters have managed to steal their customer database and caused a "loss" of over Rs 90 lakh after some policy holders either surrendered or discontinued policies believing the cheats.
Sandeep Goel, Joint Commissioner of Police (EoW), 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 among other acts.
The arrested 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 fake tele-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 otherwise would not have purchased," Goel said.
Police quizzed over 100 victims out of which about 30 told investigators that they had issued cheques on the promise of bonus which is still awaited.
Goel said the 81-year-old woman was approached by some people telling her that they would get her husband's investment validated and accordingly she was induced to issue cheques amounting to Rs 26 lakh.
Later on, she came to know that amongst the investments made, two insurance policies with forged documents had been issued and that all the amount had been misappropriated, he said.
