Loan app scam: ‘WFH’ criminals from UP arrested by Chennai cops

CHENNAI: Four persons, including a 22-year-old woman, who were operating a call centre in Gurugram for unlicensed loan apps, which target gullible people across the country, were arrested by the cyber-crime wing of Chennai police.

The arrested persons were identified as Gurugram-based M Nisha (22), her brother, Jitender Tanwar (24), Deepak Kumar Pandey (26) of Uttar Pradesh and Prakash Sharma (21) of Delhi, who was the manager of the call centre.

The main accused in the racket is from Bihar and is yet to be arrested, police said.

Commissioner Shankar Jiwal said that Chennai police have been following up on the five cases registered recently of people being cheated through loan apps.

While the amount lost by the complainants here are less than Rs 5,000, the harassment by the collection agents, who operate in an organised manner, led police to trace the people behind the crime.

Chennai Police Commissioner Shankar Jiwal said that these unlicensed loan apps have become a mushrooming cottage industry across the country and termed them ‘work from home’ criminals.

“From our investigation, they have been easily making Rs 1 crore a day. These are not approved by any regulatory body and usually give loans less than Rs 10,000 to persons with less documentation,” Commissioner Jiwal said.

The methods employed by the recovery agents on the defaulters have even led to cases of suicide in the State.

When a person downloads the app, one gives permission to access all contacts and in some cases the photo gallery too and if a borrower defaults on a loan, the recovery agent creates a WhatsApp group, adding all the contacts of the borrower and post messages demeaning the borrower.

Based on sustained investigations pouring over WhatsApp chats and emails, a team headed by Cyber Crime Inspector Kalaiselvan camped in the NCR (National capital region) and managed to bust one of the call centres with the help of their counterparts in UP and Haryana.

During their investigations, police found that they had 500 sim cards and were also in possession of UPI Ids, which were sold to them by genuine bank account holders.

The arrested persons were produced before local courts there and were brought to the city on a transit warrant. They have been remanded in judicial custody.

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