Hyderabad: A retired employee of the ministry of defence received a call from a person who identified himself as an official of the governing body of the Insurance Council in New Delhi. The caller told the retired employee that he had been awarded an incentive of Rs 6.3 lakh and that he can claim it by paying Rs 20,000 as security deposit. After paying the amount he was told that he will get Rs 70 lakh as incentive.
The victim who believed the caller deposited Rs 42 lakh in the bank accounts specified only to realize that he had been cheated and he a filed a complaint with the police.
The Rachakonda police arrested eight persons including a woman from New Delhi in connection with the case and recovered Rs 1.28 lakh and other material from them. Police said the fraudsters had been running a call centre to cheat the public in the name of insurance incentives.
The arrested people are Sophender Singh, finance manager, Inderpreet Kaur, general manager, Ashok Kumar, admin manager and team leaders Himanshu Sharma, Navojit Roy, Vishnu Kumar, Md Sarfaraz and Vijayrai.
Joint commissioner of police Tarun Joshi said the victim got the first call in January and the caller said the victim had been awarded the incentive and asked him to pay security deposit. After taking him into confidence the fraudsters started extracting money for various charges saying they were refundable. The victim realised that he was being cheated and lodged a complaint in June.
Based on call data records mobile tower locations and the accounts in which the money was deposited, police traced the suspects to Moti Nagar in South Delhi and found they were running a call centre. There were 12 men and 12 women working in the office.
Investigations revealed that the kingpin Vijay, who is absconding, started a house cleaning business named ‘Accurate Services’ two years ago, but when it failed, he started collecting data of customers from call centres offering marketing services to companies by paying Rs 5,000 for data of 5,000 people.
By using this data he used to call random customers, lure them with offers and extract money from them, the joint commissioner said.
The arrested persons were presented in court and remanded.
