Mumbai Crime: Four held for duping insurance policy holders

Suraj Waghmare, one of the accused

Four people were arrested recently by the DB Marg police for running a fake call center in the name of an insurance company.

"The accused used to call people and say that if you surrender the policy then you will get the benefit of lakhs of rupees," said police.

They used to cheat people in the name of process fee to surrender the policy, they added.

According to the information received from the police, Meena Sawant (58), who works as a clerk in Canara Bank, was called by a person named Darshan Thombre few months ago. Thombre told her that she has premium dues of Reliance Nippon Insurance, which she should pay quickly. When Sawant said she had paid the premium, Thombre asked her to send the receipt on WhatsApp which she did. Two days after sending the premium receipt, Thombre called Sawant and told her that if she surrenders the policy, she will get Rs 2,93,000. Sawant then told Thombre that apart from Reliance Nippon, she also has two policies of Bharti AXA which she wants to surrender. On this, Thombre said that both of these companies have merged and she can surrender the policy but will have to pay a process fee of Rs 10,000, for which Sawant agreed.

Also Read: Thane Crime: Two held for posing as power firm employees, cheating people of over Rs 19 lakh

The next day Thombre gave Sawant a bank account number and asked her to deposit the process fee in it. Sawant deposited the money.

Two days later, Thombre called again and asked to deposit another Rs 15,000 in the account as process fee. Sawant deposited that too. In this way, Thombre took a total of Rs 90,000 from Sawant. When the victim did not get the money in return for surrendering the insurance, she called Thombre and he didn't pick up. Sawant then complained to the police.

After Sawant's complaint, the DB Marg police traced the location of the number from which the call came and arrested Suraj Waghmare (28). Investigation revealed that Waghmare works in a call center from where he called Sawant. After this, DB Marg police arrested Tejas Panwalkar (26), who was working in the same office along with Sagar Pawal (36) and Namdev Jangle (33), who ran a call center in Kapurbawdi area of ​​Thane.

Police have seized 2 laptops, 8 GSM fixed wireless terminal and five SIM cards from their call center. On Thursday, the police presented these four in court and told said that two notebooks, a diary, Aadhar card of the customer, PAN card, along with information about people's insurance and their salary have been received from the call center. DB Marg police told the court, "It has to be investigated from where all this data was received and how many people have been cheated by the arrested accused."