Citylight resident duped of Rs 1Cr in policy fraud

Surat: In an online insurance policy fraud, a 74-year-old retired LIC officer from the Citylight area was duped of Rs 1 crore.
The accused had been cheating the victim since 2014 as he transferred a total of Rs 1 crore in 125 bank transactions. The accused called from different numbers and told the victim to pay certain charges if he wanted his 10 insurance policies to mature.
The accused also sent the victim fake letters from govt departments like Income Tax, RBI, IRDA, and Ministry of Revenue, among others. The fraud was unearthed by Surat cybercrime branch police while they were investigating another case.
According to details, in 2014, the victim received a call from an unknown number as a person offered him an insurance policy. Lured by the promise of a good return, he took 10 policies from HDFC, LIC, Reliance Life, Future Plus, and Birla Sun Life and paid a Rs 9.19 lakh premium. After that, he did not pay any further premiums.
Since 2014, the victim received calls from various insurance advisors like Avinash Sharma, Rajesh Chavla, B K Verma, Vikram Singh Ravat, Gaurang Jaiswal, Aditya Shrivastav, and Priya, who demanded various charges for tax, code activation of policy, NOC for policy, and TDS so that the policies could mature and payment could be made to the victim. They also assured the victim that the charges would be paid back with the maturity.
The victim started paying these amounts from April 2014 and made the last payment on Dec 30, 2024. He made 125 payments during this period, worth Rs 1 crore, in the hope that one day he would get all the amounts, including his policy amount, back on maturity.
Since 2017, the accused also sent him letters from RBI, Income Tax, IRDA, and the Revenue Department with fake stamps so that the victim thought the charges were genuine.
Meanwhile, recently, the Surat cybercrime team arrested a person named Sumit from Delhi in a policy fraud case. During his investigation, they found an entry of Rs 36 lakh in a bank account related to Sumit. They also found details of the 74-year-old victim on his phone. So, they called the victim on April 22 and informed him that he was being cheated by the fraudsters and asked him to report to the police station.
When the senior citizen reached the station, he realised he was cheated and filed a complaint for Rs 1 crore cheating.