Loan scam
Instant loan app scam: Police arrest four people, including 2 Chinese nationals
Chennai/UNI: The Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Tamil Nadu police arrested four people, including two Chinese nationals, from Bengaluru in connection with instant microloan lending scam conducted via several mobile phone apps.
Police sources said on Saturday that the arrested individuals were M.Xiao ya mau (38) and M.Yuan Lun (28), both Chinese nationals, and their associates M.Pramoda (28) and C.R.Pavan (27) hailing from Karnataka.
They were arrested based on a complaint by one Ganesan who lodged an FIR accusing abuse, intimidation and harassment by the online loan app firms over repayment with exorbitant rate of interest.
The complainant downloaded “M Rupee” app from the Google Play Store to avail Rs 5,000 loan from the firm. His Pan card, Aadhaar card, photo and other details were collected by the firm and Rs 3,500 was transferred into his account, while Rs 1,500 was deducted towards interest for a week period. He was asked to repay the loan amount of Rs 5,000 within a week and when he failed, he was intimidated by the lender.
The CCB police registered a case and conducted a detailed investigation. The probe revealed that more than 50 instant money lending apps were found in Google play store and most of them were functioning from Bengaluru.
A special CCB team went to Bengalure and through its investigation found a call centre functioning in the name of True Kindle Technology Private Limited in which around 110 persons were employed. It was owned by Pramoda and Pavan.
The duo was running a number of apps under the names My Cash, Aurora Loan, Quick Loan, D Money, Rapid Loan, Eazy Cash, New Rupee, Rupee Loan etc. They offered instant loans to about one lakh individuals and levied huge interest and resorted to systematic abusing, harassment, threatening of the defaulters through the call centre.
Further investigations revealed that the call centre was run by the Chinese nationals with the assistance of both Pramoda and Pavan.
It was also revealed that another Chinese national named Hong was the head of the call centre and worked from China.
Based on his instructions, the call centre was run by the four arrested people.
Each employee of the call centre has to give instant loans to atleast 10 people in a week, failing which they will be sent out.
All the four persons were arrested by the special team and laptops, mobile phones and documents were seized from them.
The police also identified one Nutham Ram as the developer of the mobile phone apps.
Chennai Police Commissioner Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal congratulated and rewarded the special police team for arresting the gang.
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