Loan app fraud: 12 held in UP for intimidating borrowers

Noida: The cyber cell of Noida Police has arrested 12 person from a call Centre in the city, linked to a Chinese lending app through which they duped and intimidated borrowers.

Initially, small amounts ranging from Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 are lent to people, and would threaten to share their objectionable morphed images, pressuring them into repaying 10 to 20 times of the loan amount.

They used to hack data from the mobile phones of people who take loan using the app including contact list, photos and videos. Later, these accused used to threaten victims with morphed photos and videos in a bid to extort money from them. They even set up a call centre in Sector 63 for the purpose.

Police recovered 36 desktop computers, 15 laptops, eight smartphones, two dialers, 135 SIM cards, 10 headphones, Rs 1.5 lakh in cash from their possession.

The arrested accused have been identified as Punit Tuli, Mohd Afzal, Jitendra, Neeraj Lal, Shivam, Azeem, Aakash Srivastava, Sumit, Arun Singh, Siddharth Ojha, Rajnessh Jha, and Bharat.

Many suicides have been reported across the country linked to the intimidation by different loan apps. Despite this, people fall prey to the lenders because of the easy availability of money.

Earlier, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has identified 600 illegal lending apps in the country. According to its regulations, lending apps should be registered with the central bank and should be put in their 'white list' in order to operate in the country.

-IANS Input