12 held for duping 200 people across India

Twelve men were arrested from the National Capital Region for allegedly duping over 200 people, including a retired bank manager, across the country of Rs 13 crore by making them invest in bogus investment plans, police said on Saturday.

The accused had been operating a fake call centre for two years under the nose of authorities and were arrested from Gurgaon and Faridabad, they said.

The scam came to light after the 63-year-old retired bank manager filed a police complaint on July 26, that he was cheated of more than Rs 20 lakh by the accused, who induced him to invest in fake insurance plans.

The retired manager deposited the amount in various bank accounts between April 2018 and May 2019, thinking he was investing in insurance plans.

Then he started doubting the scheme and asked for refunds but the accused avoided him and demanded more investments, following which he reported the matter to police.

During investigation, police analysed the account statements and found over Rs 13 crore was deposited to these accounts from 225 people across the country over two years, they said.

SD Mishra, the deputy commissioner of police (Rohini), said they arrested the 31-year-old Prabhat Singh, one of the accused, when he was withdrawing money from one of the bank accounts. "On his instance, the other accused were arrested," Mishra added.

Police identified the other 11 accused as Rupesh (28), Jitender (28), Robin Mathew (29), Dalip Singh (28), Vishal (24), Ranjan Garg (31), Vicky Dhawan (29), Raj Kumar (31), Ram Gopal (33), Jitender Singh (29) and Kanhaiya Rajput (35).

Explaining the modus operandi, police said the accused used to first opened bank accounts on the basis of fake names and addresses and then passed on the details to their associates running the call centres.

The call-centre employees used to contact victims and convince them to make investments in their bogus investment plans and later withdrew the money.

Eight SIM cards, four chequebooks and five ATM cards have been seized from the accused, they added.