Online scammers have duped a man of Koraput district of a whopping Rs 75 lakh after luring him with a hefty bonus on his insurance policies.
The matter came to the fore when Susanta Kumar Behera, a resident of HAL Township in Sunabeda, lodged a complaint in this connection with the Cyber Cell of the Crime Branch in Cuttack.
Behera had bought as many as seven insurance policies worth lakhs in online mode in January 2018 on an assurance of a huge bonus after a month. As he did not receive the bonus, he lodged a complaint with the Bima Lokpal in Bhubaneswar in July 2019.
In February 2021, a woman telephoned Behera identifying herself as a Bima Lokpal officer from Kolkata. She asked him to deposit Rs 1 lakh in a particular bank account towards registration fee. Behera did so.
A few months later, two men called up Behera posing as officers of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and told him to comply with the instructions of the woman, who again contacted Behera and said the insurance amount was increased and he would receive around Rs 1.5 crore as payout.
The woman kept seeking more money from Behera on the pretext of income tax, GST and other charges. Surprisingly, the victim borrowed the money from his friends and moneylenders and transferred a total of Rs 75.58 lakh to different bank accounts between February and October 2021.
Further police investigation into the case is on.
