Conmen dip into NRI’s Rs 76 lakh insurance, splurge on gold

HYDERABAD: An NRI became the latest victim of a huge insurance fraud wherein he found 76 lakh of his insurance policy money had already been withdrawn and the fraudsters merrily buying 56 lakh worth gold from a jewellery shop in Mehdipatnam.
Cyber crime sleuths of Rachakonda police on Monday busted the racket by arresting six accused, including a relationship manager of a private insurance company, for diverting the NRI’s, K Kishore Kumar, insurance policy money into a fake bank account.

Investigators also stumbled upon how the gang duped several policy holders and bought gold biscuits with the ill-gotten money. As of now, the gang had illegally diverted 4 crore of insurance money. It committed 19 offences since 2019, police said.
Among the arrested were: relationship manager K Ranga Sai Harsha, graphics designer D Akshay Kumar, food delivery boy Mohammed Yaseen Ahmed, cab driver M Prasanth Sai, V Achyuth and A Prakash Reddy. Property worth 60 lakh was recovered from them.
Rachakonda commissioner of police DS Chauhan said: “After going into the depth of the case, we found that someone sent an email to the insurance company, impersonating the NRI and requesting for closure of the policy before its maturity. Finally, we found that it was the relationship manager Sai Harsha, who is behind the fraud.”
It all began when Kishore recently went to the insurance company’s office to update his address against his unit linked insurance policy (ULIP). To his shock, the staff informed him that 76 lakh against the said policy had already been withdrawn on his request. The policy was closed before its maturity and the money was credited into Kishore’s bank account in South Indian Bank, they told him.
Kishore immediately lodged a complaint with Rachakonda cyber crime police.
They found that someone had fraudulently opened a bank account with the help of a forged PAN card by using Kishore’s name and his original PAN and the fraudsters credited the money into the fake account.
Chauhan said Harsha had access to the high value customers’ details. Harsha would send an email to the insurance company requesting to withdraw the policy money before its maturity. He would also share the bank account number to which the policy money could be credited. Prior to this, Harsha would open the bank account in the name of policyholders by submitting the fraudulent PAN card and driving licence, police said.
14 fake PAN cards, one fake Aadhaar card, one fake voter ID, 10 fake driving licences, 10 passbooks, 376 grams of gold, an airgun and 6 lakh cash were recovered from the gang.