Noida: Fake insurance policies’ renewal racket busted, 11 held

Noida: The Noida Police on Saturday arrested 11 people for allegedly running a bogus loan and insurance policy renewal racket in the city, officers said, adding that personal data of over 10,000 victims was also recovered from suspects’ possession.

According to Shakti Avasthy, deputy commissioner of police (crime), the suspects were arrested in a joint operation by a crime response team (CRT) and a team from Sector 49 police station.

Police identified the arrested accused as Ashish Kumar (alias Amit), 28; Jitendra Kumar Verma (alias Abhishek of Bisrakh), 30; Nisha alias Sneha (23, native of Bihar); Kajal Kumari alias Shruti (21); Sarita alias Suman (23); Babita Patel alias Mahi (23, native of Varanasi) and Garima Chauhan alias Sonia (23) -- all residents of Delhi; Reju alias Divya (22, native of Badohi district); Lovely Yadav alias Shweta (33, native of Firozabad); Poonam alias Puja (32); Arti Kumari alias Ananya (19, native of Azamgarh) -- all residents of Noida’s Hoshiarpur village in Sector 51, Noida.

“The two men, Jitendra and Ashish, are masterminds of the operation while the women worked for them and used to make calls to people,” the officer said.

The gang was busted from its office located in Sharma Market, Hoshiarpur, Sector 51, in a joint operation. They were active in Noida for the last four months. However, the bogus operation was on for the last 1.5 years from other places in the country, he informed.

During investigation, the senior officer said, Ashish revealed that he headed the operation to fraudulently obtain money from people residing in far-off districts, away from the national capital region (NCR), by selling them fake loans and insurance policies.

“Ashish, a commerce graduate from Delhi University, said that in 2019 he and Jitendra sold policies for a government life insurance company. They hatched a plan to set up the bogus operation and had been running it for over a year now,” the DCP shared.

“They would make calls to people claiming to be an insurance agent for a reputed company and offer to renew their insurance policies or offer lucrative policy with high returns in a short period of time. They would ask the victims to transfer money in return of the same and then later, would suspend contact with them,” said the officer while explaining the modus operandi.

Ashish purportedly told police that he bought data of some 10,000 people for ₹2,500 from the dark web, and recruited women to call and sell fake loans and policies to people.

“The data was stored in a black diary, recovered by police along with 25 mobile phones, 81 data sheets, a register and two fake Aadhaar cards,” said Avasthy.

The women would work on commission-basis, earning more for selling more policies. Once targets were lured, the money was transferred to a bank account in Karnataka, rented by Ashish. He and Jitendra would later divide the money among all, keeping larger shares for themselves.

“The suspects were implicated in a similar scam in Ranchi, Jharkhand earlier this year following which they moved to Noida about four months ago. As per their interrogation, the suspects have amassed over ₹1 crore through the bogus operation,” the officer said, adding that further investigation about their activities was underway.