Gurgaon hub for online fraudulent loan app firms, Hyd police arrest 11

Hyderabad: Recently, the Hyderabad police have been flooded with complaints regarding online loans apps. The cyber crime police station has registered nearly 16 FIRs pertaining to such unauthorised apps.

The cyber crime police raided two locations in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon, and three locations in Hyderabad that were running call centers for these fraudulent apps and arrested 11 people.

According to the police, the call centers were being used to persuade, harass, and intimidate the loan defaulters. They were being run on behalf of four companies: Liufang Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Hotful Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Pinprint Technologies, and Nabloom Technologies Pvt. Ltd. They had registered offices in Bangalore.

The call centers at Hyderabad employed nearly 600 tele callers while the one in Gurgaon employed 500 people. The heads and important members of these call centers were arrested, including managers, directors, centre heads, and assistant managers.

The police found that the callers took instructions from their heads in Indonesia and they suspect that the entire operation is being run by Chinese nationals. The raids at the call centers led to seizure of nearly 700 laptops, servers, and computer systems. Further investigation is on to unravel the web of financial transactions, funding, and technology base.

In the last month, three persons have died by suicide after falling prey to online loan apps. Rattled by these deaths, the Telangana police had issued an advisory asking people not to download these predatory money-lending applications. On 22 December, the sleuths of the Cyberabad cyber crime station arrested six persons in connection with instant loan apps racket.

Advisory to the public

The cyber crime police issued an advisory asking people not to download instant loan apps from the Play store or other sources that do not have proper licenses from government authorities. "Don't give your personnel and bank credentials to anyone. Please go through the terms and conditions and verify the licenses of the companies offering the loans and verify whether they have obtained permission from the concerned authorities like RBI and district collector," the advisory read.

It further warned people from downloading apps that ask for access to contacts, files, and gallery.