A Chinese national was among four people arrested byCyberabad police on Friday during a raid on a call centre in Hyderabad in thecontinuing crackdown on illegal loan apps.
Cyber crime police of Cyberabad raided Cubevo TechnologyPrivate Ltd's (Skyline) call centre and arrested four employees -- Chinesenational Yi Bai alias Dennis, Satya Pal Khyalia, Aniriddh Malhotra (bothnatives of Rajasthan) and Murathoti Richie Hemanth Seth of Andhra Pradesh.
Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar said anotherChinese national Zixia Zhang is the main accused in the case and he isabsconding along with another key accused Umapati alias Ajay.
Zixia, along with Umapati, started Digipeergo Tech Pvt Ltdlast year. They incorporated another company Skyline Innovation TechnologyIndia Pvt Ltd with the help of Singapore-based sister concern Xikai Holding PteLtd. He developed instant loan applications and hosted them in Google PlayStore. He established few more companies as call centres in various places inIndia and hired tele callers to collect the repayments from the customers.
According to the Commissioner, the accused developed 11instant loan applications which offer loans to individuals and collect hugerepayments including interest, processing charges, GST, default charges, andone per cent penalty after the expiry of loan period. They were resorting tosystematic abuse, harassment of and threats to the defaulters through callcentres run by them. They even blackmailed the borrowers by sending fake legalnotices to their relatives and family members.
The loan apps are Loan Gram, Cash Train, Cash Bus, AAA Cash,Super Cash, Mint Cash, Happy Cash, Loan Card, Repay One, Money Box, Monkey Boxetc.
The Cyber Crime Police Station had recently registered eightcases against loan applications after a complaint from a citizen. Thecomplainant said he obtained Rs 1.20 lakh loan from 28 instant loan apps andthough he paid the loan amount of Rs 2 lakh, he received abusive andthreatening calls.
The applications developed by these companies were involvedin 11 different cases registered in Cyberabad, Hyderabad and Rachakonda policecommissionerates.
The police seized Rs 2 crore in bank accounts, two laptopsand four mobile phones.
Sajjanar said the applications were developed in such a waythat on installing these apps, they get the access to the contacts, mobileinformation and other data in the device. These applications collect the idproofs, PAN card, KYC documents, and bank account details of the customers.They check the genuineness of the documents and disburse small amounts in theform of loans into the customers' bank accounts after debiting the processingcharges and GST i.e., 25-30 per cent in advance.
This was the latest in a series of crackdown by police.Earlier on December 22, Hyderabad and Cyberabad police had announced arrest of17 people in raids conducted in Hyderabad and Gurugram.
The police swung into action after three persons committedsuicide due to harassment by the employees of online loan apps last week. Atechie and a woman government employee were among those who ended their lives.
Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said fourcompanies had hired around 1,100 executives to run the multi-crore illegalbusinesses through which thousands of people were victimised across thecountry.
The companies were identified as Liufang TechnologiesPrivate Ltd, Hotful Technologies Private Ltd, Pinpoint Technologies, andNabloom Technologies Private Ltd and were registered in Bengaluru.
The police chief said that Cyber Crime Police Station hadrecently registered 16 FIRs pertaining to issue of loans by allegedunauthorised loan apps and harassment of the victims by the companies runningthe apps through their call centres.
Police raided two locations in Gurugram and three locationsin Hyderabad which were running organised tele caller centres, which were beingused to persuade, harass and intimidate the loan defaulters.
Eleven heads and important members of the call centres werearrested.
Cyberabad police had also arrested six people connected withloan apps Cash Mama, Loan Zone and Dhana Dhan. Police said Onion Credit PrivateLtd and Cred Fox Technologies Pvt Ltd were connected with these apps.
(Source: IANS)