FPJ Cyber Secure: Thane Police Uncover Bogus Insurance Scam; Fake Call Centre Dupes Victim Of ₹30,000 In Promise Of Quick Returns

Thane police have busted a fake call centre that was instrumental in providing bogus insurance policies by promising maturity returns in 24 hours. According to the police, the complainant from Thane said that he received a call from a woman on January 3.

Claiming to be calling on behalf of an insurance company, she told the man that if he invested Rs 30,000 in the company's policy, he would be entitled to get Rs 1.80 lakh returns in 24 hours. The woman further trapped the complainant, assuring that the amount would directly get credited in the bank account.

She then asked the man to share his Aadhaar and PAN card details, with the image of a cancelled cheque image on WhatsApp. Initially, he didn't pay heed to these messages. However, the con kept calling the complainant from several unknown numbers. Persuading him to take the policy, the woman shared the details of the account in which the money was to be transferred. The man finally agreed to take the policy and made a payment of Rs 30,000 in the said account. When he didn't receive the return within the promised deadline of 24 hours, he realised that he had been duped.

Acting on his complaint, the police gathered technical intelligence and subsequently carried out a raid in an establishment near the Thane railway station. The cops found that the operator of the call center and a few women, employed as telecallers, were tasked to make calls to the unsuspecting targets. All the accused were brought to the police station for an enquiry, while the phones used to make scam calls were impounded.

Last week, a case was registered under the Indian Penal Code sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and provisions 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.