Mumbai cyber police nab 14 persons part of online instant loan racket

The cyber police of Mumbai crime branch have arrested 14 persons who were part of an international racket involved in cheating people by offering loans through online instant loan apps and harassing them to recover the amount, an official said on Friday.

The cyber police suspect that the syndicate is spread across the country and neighbouring Nepal and foreign nationals are involved in the racket, he said.

The police have so far recovered data of lakhs of victims and frozen 350 bank accounts, comprising Rs 14 crore, and crypto currency worth $2.17 lakh, Joint Commissioner (crime) Suhas Warke said in a press conference.

The accused had invested the money they had siphoned from victims in more than 50 crypto wallets and invested in crypto currency, he said.

As many as 39 mobile phones, 211 SIM cards, 19 laptops, two hard disks and three routers were seized during the arrests, he said. The accused were arrested from Bengaluru (Karnataka), Andhra Pradesh, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Uttarakhand over the last couple of weeks, he said.

When asked if there was any connection between the arrests and the raids conducted in Nepal by their law enforcement agency, Warke said, ''So far, we cannot say if there is any link with this syndicate. A legal process will be initiated and data will be shared with the counterparts to see if there is any connection.'' The racket came to light when a person approached the west region cyber police station with a complaint of cheating and harassment on May 20, an official said.

The complainant had obtained a loan of Rs 3.85 lakh through 10 instant loan apps for his mother's medical treatment and he had repaid Rs 22 lakh against the loan amount, he said.

Despite repaying the loans, the man kept receiving threats from executives of these companies, who told him that they will send his morphed photos to people on his contact list, the official said.

During the probe, it came to light that the accused were using Ding Talk app to establish contact with their bosses and Click to Chat and N X Cloud to contact customers, he said.

The accused were part of a gang and each of them had different roles like harassing customers, sending obscene or morphed images of a customer to his contacts among other activities, he said.

The accused had allegedly opened more than 200 shell companies to cheat people, he said.

The probe also revealed the role of the accused in another case registered with the cyber police station, and 11 of them were involved in it, the official added.