They went for free medical check-up, and all they got was fake loan

Before you submit copies of your ID cards or other documents to attend events etc be extra cautious The Borivli police lodged an FIR on Saturday against officials of a health care company that had taken copies of important documents of people on the pretext of providing them free mediclaim The fraudsters then used the papers to take loans of Rs 155 croreThe fraudsters had even held a free health checkup camp for 287 people for the mediclaim The Borivli police have launched a manhunt for the six people who have fled including two employees of a finance company for creating fake customers for the healthcare company and taking the loansMedirecs was shut in 2019 and its owners fled File picAccording to the Borivli police the owners of Medirecs Healthcare And Research Private Limited had arranged a free mediclaim policy camp and health checkup at their office at Ganjawala Lane Borivli west between the years 2018 and 2019 They tied up with a finance company for the same ldquoAround 287 people attended the camp and after taking copies of their documents the company owners applied for mediclaim policy loans on their behalf They then fled with the loan amount after closing the office in 2019rdquo said a police officer The officer said initially Medirecs paid twothree EMIs of the policies The police said for this they had even bought 287 SIMs and fed OTPs they received on them for the loansThe police said when the vigilance team of the finance company realised that monthly installments of 287 people were pending since 20182019 they contacted them It took a while as they did not have their genuine mobile phone numbers the numbers given were by Mederics Personnel were sent to the addresses of all the 287 people who denied taking any loan from the company for health care issuesScreen shot of a duped personrsquos rant against Merdirecs on the internetldquoThey told the company officials that they had not taken any loan but had submitted their documents during a health checkup camp arranged by Medirecs for free mediclaimrdquo said another police officerWhen vigilance officers realised that they had been duped by Medirecs they went to its office but it was locked Other shop owners nearby told them that company had been shut They then approached the police and lodged a complaint in 2019 After an investigation an FIR was lodged on Saturday in the caselsquoWont get a loan nowrsquoldquoI told the recovery agents that I have not taken any loan They then gave me the details and I realised the health care company had taken this loan in our names by misusing our documents Some of us who were duped immediately wrote to the policerdquo said Vasant Sapkal 52 of Gorai one of the victims of the scam He said Medirecs took our documents including ids and crossed cheques They were told they wont have to pay EMIs for the mediclaim for a year Medirecs paid three of the EMIs before its officials shut shop and fled That is when the EMIs began to be taken from the victims bank accounts throwing light on the fraudHe said ldquoDue to lack of balance in my account the EMI bounced due to which the banks CIBIL score suffered Now the bank is refusing to give us loans My four colleagues Ashok More Vikram Lotekar Sanjay Molashi Sagar Kadam and several customers of the cooperative bank that I work for are also suffering due to thisrdquo added SapkalFinance firm staff chargedldquoWe have registered a case of cheating and forgery against the CEO and directors of the Medirecs Healthcare and Research Pvt Ltd company identified as Rajan Bhatia Arvind Thakar Bhavin Bhatia and Rajesh Jethwa We have also charged the employees of the finance company identified as Nitish Singh and Deepak Ban for their involvement in the fraud They processed the documentsrdquo said Senior Inspector Ninad Sawant from Borivli police station The police said all the accused have fledAn official of the finance company refused to comment on the complaint saying he would get back to this reporter after speaking to superiors