NEW DELHI: Delhi Police has busted a gang of cheats and arrested four persons who were allegedly using the forged signatures of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and other senior government functionaries to dupe people.
According to a senior official of the Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Operations (IFSO) Unit of Special Cell, the accused, identified as Mehtab Alam (31), Sartaj Khan (31), Mohd Junaid (29), and Deen Mohd (27), used to collect data from insurance companies and target victims by sending forged documents and cheques to entice and dupe gullible insurance policyholders.
The accused used to call the insurance policy holders posing as officials from IRDA, Reserve Bank of India, and Ministry of Finance and lured them on the pretext of providing maturity amounts against their existing and lapsed policies.
In order to convince the policyholders, they used to send them emails using email IDs that were similar to that of government financial institutions with forged documents seemingly issued from RBI, Ministry of Finance, and IRDA. Furnishing details of the operation, Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO) Prashant Gautam said the issue was highlighted by the Ministry of Finance.
In the reference sent by the Finance Ministry, the complainant was telephonically approached by a man and was told that some amount was sanctioned against his lapsed insurance policy. Thereafter he received a letter through a fake email id – dicgc@rbidepartment.org.in – and was informed that a number of Rs 12.46 lakh was sanctioned against his lapsed insurance policies.
For multiple reasons like processing charges, NOC charges, final fund release charges, etc, the victim has cheated for a total amount of Rs 1.27 lakh. The police registered an FIR under relevant sections of law and after cyber-tracking, they zeroed down on the location and identity of one of the accused involved in the crime.
“He was constantly changing his location, however, the police conducted a raid and nabbed the kingpin of the syndicate, Mehtab Alam, from Mustafabad,” the senior official said. Further his three
other aids were also traced and arrested.
3k potential targets, the process to dupe 70 was underway
All the accused involved in the offense had previous experience working at insurance companies. All of them would work as calling agents there and used to interact with the customers directly. With their arrest, the police recovered a datasheet that had details of nearly 3,000 potential victims. They also found that the accused were already in communication with 70 more victims, said Gautam.