After ICICI Prudential, fraudsters have now targeted four insurance companies, including SBI life Insurance, by stealing their customer database and duping some policyholders to either surrender or discontinue their policies.
Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing has launched a probe into the four cases having same modus operandi after complaints were received from SBI life Insurance, Reliance life Insurance, HDFC Standard life Insurance and Ageon-Religare life Insurance ltd. The cases were registered against the fraudsters under sections of the IPC and Information Technology Act last week.
Police are investigating whether the three persons arrested in connection with the attempted cheating of over 700 customers of ICICI Prudential had any connection with the latest fraud cases.
“It appears that due to malicious practice of some unscrupulous people, the companies have received complaints with regard to calls made allegedly on behalf of the company as well as insurance regulator IRDA giving false promises of bonus, scholarship etc to genuine policy holders by tele-calling and inducing them to buy new policies of different agencies,” a police official said.
He said it appeared that the fraudsters have managed to steal the customer data base from all the four companies and some of the victims were senior citizens.
While ICICI Prudential had complained to police on March 3, the other companies approached police in the period between March-end and April first week. Police official said the four fresh cases were registered between May 4 and 8. “We are investigating whether the arrested persons in the ICICI Prudential case has any link in this case. The same modus operandi has been followed in the four other cases also,” the official said.
According to the complaints, certain people have been attempting to cheat customers by impersonating as company representatives after stealing their details, including policy details, from the database.
In its complaint, SBI said it had received complaints from at least 125 policy holders about ‘spurious’ calls while Reliance life Insurance claimed that it incurred a loss of Rs 1.45 lakh after one policy was surrendered. While Reliance claimed it had received six complaints from its customers, HDFC Standard Insurance said it had received 29 complaints and incurred a loss of Rs 1.55 lakh after three policies were surrendered. Ageon-Religare said it received 12 complaints during the period of April-December last year. It claimed a loss of Rs 2.60 lakh after four policies were surrendered.