Pramesh Jain
A major online financial fraud theft of personal data of applicants by a few micro finance companies said to be front-end firms of investors in some neighbouring countries has been busted in Karnataka, by CID cyber crime police said on Thursday.
Acting on complaints from some victims, including a woman who took loan using Paisa Loan app, the Criminal Investigation Department raided four companies, arrested the chief finance officer and human resource manager of one of them and seized laptops, mobile handsets and documents.
The cyber crime Sleuths of CID busted online loan app racket and raided several firms offering instant loan to mobile users and collecting exhorbitant interest rates.
The CID officials suspects that many such firms operating are being linked to people from neighbouring countries.
The racket came to light on Monday following a complainant filed by a woman stating that she had availed loan from one of the app and later harassed despite repaying the loan amount.
She came to know of a micro finance mobile
applications lending small amount of loans,and installed an app called “Paisa Loan”from play store.She availed loan from the said app and then repaid it on time.
Later she availed loans from several other apps. But from November’2020,even though she re-paid the loan the agents of the said apps started harassing her to pay extra interest amount, abusing her and her family members in filthy and obscene language,hacked her mobile data, created whatsapp group of the her contact list and started circulating defaming contents along
with her photographs,and also inducing her to avail loans from other apps and to repay the amount .
A similar complaint was also filed by another complainant on tuesday and both the cases are under investigation.
Based on the said complaints,raid was conducted by Cyber Crime Division,CID on four companies simultaneously in Bangalore team Led by,CID SP,Dr Rohini Katoch Sepat,under the supervision of CID SP,Sharath Kumar, DYSPs,as,Kasim,Geetha Kulkarni,Nagaraj,and staff,on the following companies including Mad
Elephant Technologies Pvt Ltd,Borayanxy Technologies Pvt Ltd,Profitise Technologies Pvt Ltd.and Wizppro Solution Pvt Ltd were raided.
The equipment used to commit the offence including Laptops,Mobile Handsets and
documents were seized and as of now CFO and HR Manager of a company have been detained.
During the investigation,it was revealed that each companies possess several microloan apps of their own.On installation of such apps,users are
prompted with some basic questions when installing the app,that is,PAN Number,Aadhar Number,Bank account number,two individual reference mobile numbers etc.
Once this information is fed into the application, the app was installed into her phone.During the installation of the application,all kinds
of permissions (contacts,SMSs,call logs,camera, storage etc.,)is sought from the customer, a senior Police officer said.
Out of the loan approved by the app,(generally between Rs.3,000 to Rs.9,000),approximately 60-65 percent of the loan amount is disbursed to the customer’s account,after deducting interest, processing fee,tax.
If loan amount was Rs 3000 is approved,the user may get around Rs1800 to his account,after deducting all the charges.
A detailed investigation by the team has revealed that the Customers is charged interest rate of 36 per cent per annum on the loan amount.The loan repayment period is generally 7 days to 15 days and within the given period,the customer has to repay complete approved loan amount.
The customer receives alert SMS message or call from recovery team of the app,a day or two prior to due date.
The accused would not only harass and threaten the customers but also hack their mobile phone data (within a day or two after deadline),specially contacts and pictures of the customer.
Using these data,a whatsapp group consisting the contacts of customer is created and messages against the customer is circulated in the group with the photograph of the customer, with all kinds of abuse,sexual overtones,using customer’s photographs in the app with a tag of “CHOR”,“FRAUD”, “420”,“DEFAULTER”.
There are instances (in our own case)where a voice message is sent threatening physical and sexual assault on the female victims by the company recovery agents.This harassment will continue till the loan is repaid.
The second part of the problem is that,the customer is induced by these recovery agents to repay the loan by taking other loan thorough a different mobile application,which she has to install in her mobile phone.
As such the complainant is caught up in the loop of taking and repaying the loansthe officials said.
Preliminary investigation found that the owners of these apps are some front-end companies,for citizens of neighbouring countries are the
investors/directors and CEOs for every such company.
On identifying the agreements delivered to the complainant,it is observed that some NBFCs (Non Banking Financial Companies)are having agreement with these companies for disbursing loans.
Further investigation and raids on
these companies has revealed that,every company has at least 10 to 15 such applications developed and monitored, by them.
These applications are directly
installed,accessed,used and monitored from cloud systems based in neighbouring countries.
All the data is also hacked from this country and used against the victims.Above said companies have also used fake sim cards to call the customers.
Citizens are requested not to share the data over any kind of applications which may go against them,as a neighbouring country is using such data against the victims after hacking their mobile phones.
Meanwhile,The Reserve Bank of India has cautioned against loans being offered by unauthorised digital platforms, mobile applications promising a quick and hassle-free process. The note of caution comes amid a major instant loan app scam being surfaced in the country with its multi-city network.
There have been reports about individuals/small businesses falling prey to the growing number of unauthorised digital lending platforms/Mobile Apps on promises of getting loans in a quick and hassle-free manner.
These reports also refer to excessive rates of interest and additional hidden charges being demanded from borrowers; adoption of unacceptable and high-handed recovery methods; and misuse of agreements to access data on the mobile phones of the borrowers,” the RBI said in its notice.
“Members of the public are hereby cautioned not to fall prey to such unscrupulous activities and verify the antecedents of the company/ firm offering loans online or through mobile apps,” it said.
Urging people to never share copies of KYC documents with unidentified persons, unverified/unauthorised Apps, RBI said such fraudulent activities can be reported to law enforcement agencies or RBI’s Sachet portal (https://sachet.rbi.org.in).
“Reserve Bank has also mandated that digital lending platforms which are used on behalf of banks and NBFCs should disclose the name of the Bank(s) or NBFC(s) upfront to the customers,” the notice said.
Any victims of micro loan apps may contact Cyber Crime Division, CID said in a press release.
