A female Chinese national, involved in an extortion racket in the name of Instant Loan application through Express Loan App has been arrested by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of Special Cell, Delhi Police. The accused has been arrested along with one of her associates, who are so far, found involved in siphoning off over Rs.150 Crores to China.
The accused have been identified as Yu Zhang (52), who is a Chinese national and her associate Vineet Jhaver (38), a resident of Haryana. With the arrest of these two accused, the total arrest in the Instant Loan application fraud has gone up to 24.
According to a police official, three laptops, one hard disk, 17 mobile phones along with other items have been recovered from both the accused. These accused were involved in uploading and transmitting user’s data to Servers based in China.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, (IFSO, Special Cell) Prashant Gautam said that multiple complaints were being received by the Delhi Police at National Cybercrime Record Portal (NCRP) that instant loan applications are disbursing loans at higher rates and even after payment of loan, they are extorting money using the morphed obscene pictures of the victims.
IFSO took cognizance of the same and started analyzing the complaints at NCRP. During the analysis, it was found that more than 100 such apps are involved in the loan and extortion racket.
Further it was found that all the apps were seeking access to personal data from the user like, contacts, chats, messages, and images of the user. After obtaining access to the personal data, the same were being uploaded to the servers in India and China.
Modus operandi…
During the course of investigation it came to notice that these malicious applications are developed in the garb of loan providing applications and seek all permissions from the users.
Applications are hosted on Google Play Store, websites and in advertisements. The app is also marketed using the search engine optimization feature of Google.
Users in need of an instant small amount of loan downloads the applications, grant permissions to the app after a small Know Your Customer (KYC) (only uploading of Aadhar Card, PAN Card and a live photograph). After the process, the loan is disbursed within minutes to the bank accounts of the users.
Further, through these apps the contact lists, chats, and images of the user are being uploaded to the servers hosted in India and China. Due to this, the customer starts receiving calls from different numbers (procured on Fake Identity) forcing him to pay more by threatening him with the morphed/obscene pictures.
People in search of small loan amounts are trapped…
During the investigation, it was noticed that people in dire need of a small loan ranging from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 10,000 are being targeted. Many incidents of citizens committing suicides under the pressure and blackmailing were even reported from other parts of country. The financial trail revealed that multiple mule accounts were being used for getting the amount and each account was having huge transactions.
The team of IFSO registered different cases on these apps and earlier arrested 22 persons involved in it. Further, a police team under supervision of Assistant Commissioner of Police Sunil Panchal started a probe.
During the investigation, it was found that the network of frauds is spread across Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and other parts of the country. Police started to trace the accused and eventually succeeded in arresting the mastermind of the present case, the Chinese national along with her Indian associate.
It was revealed during the interrogation that the accused are operating at the behest of other Chinese nationals. Identities of other Chinese nationals in these cases are being established and efforts are being made to trace and arrest them.