Rajkot: 'Ineligible' man gets loan, harassed for repayment

RAJKOT: In a bizzare cyber fraud, cash was deposited in a man's account after a mobile application offering loans got automatically downloaded on his mobile phone when his 15-year-old son was surfing the social media website.
The complainant Gauranggiri Goswami applied for the loan by submitting the requisite documents, but he got a message that he was not eligible. Goswami was shocked when Rs 9,000 was credited to his account even after he deleted the mobile application from his phone.
The cyber crooks then started pounding him with phone calls, asking him to deposit Rs 17,780 against the Rs 9,000. At one point of time, they even threatened to kidnap his wife and son and make his photographs depicting him as a habitual defaulter viral on social media.
Goswami lodged a complaint with the Bharatnagar police station. It was on July 24 that Goswami's son was surfing Facebook on his mobile when the application offering loans got downloaded automatically.
The crooks, who purportedly made this application, offered Rs 20,000 and Rs 50,000 loans after the user submitted the valid documents through the app. When Goswami uploaded the documents, he got a message that he was ineligible for the loan and thereafter he deleted the application.
On August 1, Goswami got a message from his bank that Rs 9,000 was credited to his account and the statement revealed that it was done by Tirupati Enterprise. Goswami had no clue about the depositor. On inquiring with the bank, he was told that the money might have been credited by mistake and that he would be asked to return it if any complaint is received by the bank.
A week after this transaction, Goswami started getting several calls from differing phone numbers asking him to deposit Rs 17,780. He also received a link to deposit this money online.
The callers were speaking in Hindi and English and later threatened to kidnap his wife and son if he did not pay up.
Not just Goswami, but his mother too was pounded with calls where persons at the other end rained expletives at her. The victim was even threatened of being arrested within an hour.