A retired school teacher in Kanpur has allegedly been cheated of nearly ₹43 lakh over a slow-burning fraud that stretched across three years, with scammers posing as insurance company representatives repeatedly reeling him back in with fresh pretexts every time his previous payment failed to produce the promised payout.
A Policy Detail Becomes the Opening
The complainant, Premdatt Sharma, a resident of Ambedkar Nagar and a retired teacher from GN Inter College, Gumti, had purchased an insurance policy from PNB MetLife scheduled to mature in 2026. Investigators believe the fraudsters had access to details related to this genuine policy, which they then used to make their impersonation convincing from the very first call.
In 2024, Sharma received a call from someone claiming to be an insurance company employee, who told him his policy’s “agent code” needed to be changed to prevent a financial loss, and that completing the process was essential to receiving the full benefit of his policy at maturity. This agent-code framing has become a recurring opening move in insurance fraud cases across Kanpur specifically; a nearly identical tactic was used against a Kanpur woman cheated of ₹6.53 lakh in a case reported earlier this year, suggesting either a shared script circulating among fraud networks or the same syndicate operating repeatedly within the city.
An Escalating Sequence of Payments
Trusting the caller, Sharma was persuaded to purchase an additional insurance policy worth ₹36,000, which he was told would generate better returns than his existing plan, and transferred the amount to the account provided. The scammers stayed in regular contact with him afterward, a deliberate tactic that kept any doubt from taking root over the following weeks.
Around three months later, a woman calling herself another company representative told Sharma a special bonus card had been issued against his policy, and that depositing ₹2.75 lakh would secure him a ₹69 lakh maturity payout, a return so disproportionate to the deposit that it should have raised immediate suspicion, but which Sharma, reassured by the earlier interactions, believed and paid.
From there, the demands continued under a rotating set of justifications, processing charges, taxes, verification fees and other administrative costs, each one framed as the final step before his money would finally be released. Over the full three-year span, Sharma transferred approximately ₹43 lakh in total, with each payment met by fresh assurances rather than any actual payout.
Realisation, Then a Formal Complaint
It was only when neither the policy proceeds nor the promised bonus materialised despite repeated payments that Sharma grew suspicious and attempted to reach the individuals again, only to find them unresponsive. He subsequently approached the Gutaini Police Station to lodge a formal complaint. Investigators are now examining bank accounts, mobile numbers, call records and digital transaction trails to identify the accused and trace the wider network behind the fraud.
Sharma’s ordeal fits a pattern cybercrime investigators have documented repeatedly across the country, from a Delhi retired Army Colonel defrauded of over ₹2 crore through fake insurance surrender-value promises to a Greater Noida retired official cheated of ₹52 lakh by a gang that included a serving woman police constable and used forged Finance Ministry and RBI stamps to lend its claims official-looking legitimacy. What distinguishes these cases is not sophistication in any single call, but persistence: victims are kept on the hook for months or, as in Sharma’s case, years, with each new pretext designed specifically to prevent the accumulated losses from ever being written off as a lost cause.
What Experts Advise
Renowned cybercrime expert and former IPS officer Prof Triveni Singh said fraudsters running insurance-related scams typically impersonate company representatives to build trust before demanding money in the name of bonus payments, agent code updates, taxes, processing charges or verification fees, all while falsely promising large eventual payouts. He advised policyholders to verify every insurance-related call through the company’s official customer care channels before making any payment, and to never transfer money to unknown bank accounts based solely on a phone call or message, however credible the caller may sound or however much prior contact has already taken place.
He further urged victims of cyber fraud to report incidents immediately through the National Cyber Crime Helpline 1930 or the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, noting that prompt reporting significantly improves the chances of tracing and freezing stolen funds.
