Illegal loan apps: Telangana police conducts multiple raids, arrest 17

The Telangana Police on Monday arrested 17 people in raids carried out in Hyderabad and Gurugram, New Delhi for operating instant loan apps that did not have approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Several of these apps were found resorting to online harassment to recover loans from defaulters. Telangana alone reported three deaths over alleged harassment by the loan apps. 

While the Hyderabad police arrested 11 people in raids in Hyderabad and Gurugram, the remaining six were taken into custody by the Cyberabad police during raids in Hyderabad. The action came after three persons died by suicide due to harassment by the employees of online loan apps last week. A techie and a woman government employee were among those who ended their lives.

Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said four companies had hired around 1,100 executives to run the multi-crore illegal businesses through which thousands of people were victimised across the country. VC Sajjanar, Commissioner Cyberabad police, said that the police had written to banks and frozen 18 bank accounts, according to reports. 

The police said that the companies were identified as Liufang Technologies Private Ltd, Hotful Technologies Private Ltd, Pinpoint Technologies, and Nabloom Technologies Private Ltd and were registered in Bengaluru. The Cyber Crime Police Station had recently registered nearly 16 FIRs pertaining to the issue of loans by alleged unauthorised loan apps and harassment of the victims by the companies running the apps through their call centres.

Police raided two locations in Gurugram and three locations in Hyderabad which were running organised call centres. These call centres were being used to persuade, harass and intimidate the loan defaulters.

Eleven heads and important members of the call centres were arrested, the police added. "These callers took instructions from their heads in Indonesia. The entire operation of these loan apps appears to be run with Chinese nationals at the helm. This was also indicated during an investigation into the multi-crore colour prediction gaming app scam where crores of rupees were transferred to shell companies which were registered as NBFCs," the police commissioner said.

The raids on the call centres led to the seizure of nearly 700 laptops, servers, computer systems etc. Further investigation is ongoing to find out the web of financial transactions, funding, technology base etc.

Meanwhile, Cyberabad police six people connected with loan apps Cash Mama, Loan Zone and Dhana Dhan. Cyberabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar said Onion Credit Private Ltd and Cred Fox Technologies Pvt Ltd were connected with these apps. The arrests were made in connection with the complaint received by Cyber Crime police station of Cyberabad on December 7. The complainant alleged that the operators of loan apps were blackmailing and threatening him.

The two companies had two offices with 110 employees. They had entered into agreements with nine NBFCs. Both companies have 1.5 lakh customers, of which about 70,000 are active, the police said, adding that they developed their own apps for maintaining the database of the customers and placed it in Google Play Store for easy download.

Police have issued notices to nine NBFCs who had a tie-up with 'Cash Mama' and 'Loan Zone'. A notice has also been issued to Google to take down the applications because of their criminal activities.