A massive US$ 1,500,000 Insurance Policy Fraud
- Rajesh Soundararajan
- Mar 31, 2020
- 3 min read
Could this have been prevented easily?
A massive US$ 1,500,000 Insurance Policy Fraud
This is an amazing story of a massive insurance fraud that was 100% facilitated by fake documents. Preventing it was so simple and yet, it wasn’t done.
When a garment businessman invested ₹110 million in several insurance policies, shares, mutual funds, and government bonds, at the behest of ‘representatives’ of a private bank, little did he realize that he was being duped all along. What is even more concerning was that this was not a single one off transaction, but the businessman over a period of time had issued 186 cheques that were deposited in various bank accounts.
The key accused used to work as a teleoperator for a private bank in Noida in 2016. Even after the call center closed down he, along with his five colleagues, collected data of all the existing customers of the bank’s insurance policies. They offered customers returns between 18-24%. In fact, the scamsters produced fake certificates from various ministries, central banks and various governing bodies, that made the sale look authentic.
Such fraud can remain unnoticed for years unless there is an insurance claim event.
We have covered some of the other cases in Are you a victim of Insurance Policy Fraud?
Tamperproof and Secure QR Code embedded Insurance Policies
The surest and simplest way to stop an insurance policy fraud is remarkably simple. The insurance company prints a simple, tamper-proof and secure QR code on the insurance document. This secure QR code can be easily verified by anyone with a smartphone and a dedicated or authorized App. The insurance company can educate their customers that all genuine policies will carry such a secure QR code that can be verified by the customer. This education can be through their website or television and print media etc. Such a QR code works for both electronic and physical document formats and the policyholder or any third party can validate the authenticity of these documents online or even offline.
Qryptal secure QR solution solves this problem in two steps
1. The document generation system, used by the insurance company, integrates with Qryptal’s secure QR generation system to produce a QR code containing the critical information pertaining to the policy. This is then made a part of the policy document itself. Such secure documents can ONLY be generated by the insurance company and no one else can issue fake documents on their behalf. Moreover, the QR code CANNOT be modified or tampered. Hence it helps to prevent unauthorized manipulation or tampering.
2. The policyholder or any third party can and must immediately verify this policy document by scanning the QR code with an authorized app (could be that of the insurance company) or a web validation tool which contains the public key to decrypt the information signed by the private key of the issuer at the time of the QR code generation. Only in case, the document is valid and genuine, the QR code will show the relevant information. If it has tampered, then verification will fail.
A sample of a Motor Insurance Policy with a QR code encapsulating the details is shown here. On scanning the code all the details contained inside it is visible for verification.
Sample Motor Insurance policy with Secure QR Code
Secure QR code verification for insurance policy using such a system offers significant benefits
It works for both printed and electronic documents
The secure QR code can only be generated by the issuing organization and cannot be faked or tampered by anyone else
It allows self-service verification of documents by insured parties
Some other articles which maybe of interest
How to Verify Insurance Policy Documents and Avoid Fake Insurance Scams
How does one tell if passports and visa documents are genuine?
