Dindoshi police registered a first information report on October 17 after the victim, Taufiq Khan (name changed), a female lawyer friend received a call demanding payment failing which they would harm him.
Khan filed a complaint with the police fearing for his life after he started receiving threat calls for the last three months.
“At one point, I thought of ending my life. But my ailing mother’s face came in front of me, which made me change my mind. There are no dues pending. The entire loan sum of Rs 60,000 was cleared in 2021 after my father helped me. The loan was cleared after the loan app fraudsters called on my father’s mobile in 2021, abused and threatened him, demanding payment. The problem came back to haunt me after two years. I was afraid when I got calls from a number that showed it was made from Pakistan,” Khan told TOI.
Dindoshi police have booked an unknown person under the Indian Penal Code sections for criminal intimidation and under the IT Act. “Initially, the caller sent morphed clips to his family members, relatives, and friends to extort money. When it did not work out, they started making threat calls to kill him and threatened all those who were known to him. We are tracking the calls that he was receiving from people claimed to be from the apps—Fast Wallet, AA Credit, Honeycash,” said a police officer at the Dindoshi police station.
Khan said he has posted details on social media platforms, alerting his friends and all those who know him not to believe the calls and the morphed images that they are receiving. He has mentioned in the post that he has cleared all the loans, and still, the fraudsters are harassing him.
In another case registered with the Sahar police station on October 21, the loan app sharks are making calls to the victim, Andheri resident TS Rohit (34), phonebook contact list and are asking him to pay the Rs 50,000 loan that he took in May.
“I was regularly paying the loan, which was getting deducted from my bank account. However, the loan app did not deduct two months’ EMI and applied for a fine. I conveyed that I would make the payment but not the fine. This annoyed the accused callers who started making calls to my contacts and demanding to clear the loan,” said Rohit in the FIR. A Sahar police officer said the loan app shark threatened Rohit to spoil his CIBIL score, which would deny him the opportunity to get a loan in the future. The harassment began after morphed images were sent to his contact lists.
Cyber Expert Ritesh Bhatia said the harassment by these Chinese-backed companies is getting dirtier, and as a result, some victims have committed suicide, while some have slipped into depression. There are victims who receive rape threats too. Moreover, there is also a huge loss to India because all this money recovered goes to foreign lands via the crypto route. These apps charge a whopping 66% interest rate, which is much higher than the RBI’s limit of 36%.
Loan seekers should avoid downloading such loan apps, as these apps gain access to all the information on your phone, including stored passwords, SMS, contacts, gallery, location, and much more.
Six months ago, the Government of India took down and blocked around 120 illegal loan apps. They have taken the issue seriously and are trying to hold a meeting with the RBI for whitelisting.
In May, Google India removed over 3,500 personal loan apps from the Play Store due to non-compliance with policies and regulations. The apps were illegally accessing user data, including contacts and photos. They were not even following guidelines on other matters.
The action comes after the Mumbai cyber police in 2022 arrested 14 people for their involvement in an online loan app fraud that used half a dozen shell companies registered across India to open bank accounts and extort money. The fraudsters converted approximately Rs 350 crore into cryptocurrency before transferring it abroad.
Google has introduced new licensing requirements for personal loan apps to combat fraud in India. The move comes after Mumbai police registered 176 loan fraud cases, leading to 70 arrests and 12 chargesheets between 2021 and March 31, 2023. Google’s action is part of a broader initiative following the Mumbai police’s breakthrough in busting the loan fraud racket in various parts of Mumbai, Bengaluru, and other parts of India.
The racket’s operations were distributed, and it even had links in Nepal. Two call centers in Nepal were busted in 2022, following a tip-off from the Mumbai police.
A senior IPS officer said the number of such cases declined after the racket was busted, with at least 27 arrests made during the probe. Nepal police cooperated in the investigation and provided details of shady call centers, which had been outsourced work of threatening victims with objectionable videos.
