Fifty-year-old lawyer Nitin Soni, who handles cases of cyber fraud, became a victim himself when a woman caller, posing as a representative of a leading online insurance broker, sold him a fake car insurance policy at an attractive rate.
The whole transaction was done in such a clever manner that Soni did not realise he was dealing with a fake agent. He realised the fraud a few days later when he spotted a spelling error in his name in the policy document and tried to get it corrected.
“In fact, I drove my car for almost a week with a fake insurance policy. It was a spelling mistake in my name which helped me trace the fraud,” Soni told a news agency. Based on his complaint, an FIR was lodged at Mandir Marg cyber police station on April 21.
The telecaller identified herself as a representative of Policybazar.com and had prior information of the expiry of Soni’s car insurance. After initial discussion on the phone, the woman shifted to WhatsApp messages where the display picture (DP) resembled the company’s logo.
They even owned an almost similar domain name, carrenewalpolicybazar.com, from where they sent emails to Soni and made some lucrative offers with added features.
Aware of such frauds, Policybazar.com has already put up an advisory on its website for the general public where it says that fraudsters can come up with identical fake websites to dupe consumers hence people should always cross-verify such claims by writing to feedback@policybazaar.com.
“We do keep educating our customers not to fall prey to imposters,” a representative from Policybazar.com said.
Soni claimed in his complaint, “The woman sent me the features of the policy from email address support@carrenewalpolicybazar.com in respect of IFFCO Tokio General Insurance where I was supposed to pay 17,700.”