Delhi police bust racket extorting money through Chinese loan apps

The racket extorted huge amount of money with the help of Chinese loan apps and have so far siphoned an amount of ₹10 crore to two Chinese people namely ‘Mr. Albert and Mr.Trey’, said the Delhi police

The Delhi police on Wednesday arrested four persons for allegedly running a racket with two Chinese nationals to extort money from people by using loan applications and sending them their morphed photographs, officials said.

The racket employed 134 female tele-callers, 15 male callers and 3 team leaders on the first, third and fourth floor of a building in Delhi’s Dwarka Sector -7.

Deputy commissioner of police (outer) Brijendra Yadav said the accused have been identified as Anil, 35, the alleged mastermind of the racket, Alok Sharma, 24, Avnish, 22 and Kannan, 35.

Police said that a grievance was lodged on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal on July 14 and earlier on May 28 by a Narela resident, Himanshu Goel, who alleged that he got lured through an advertisement on Facebook regarding hassle free loan of ₹50,000 and downloaded a loan app in the name of “On Stream”.

While downloading the app they prompted for access to his contact, gallery and other media on the phone which he allowed. Thereafter, he was granted a loan of ₹6,870 only. However, people started harassing him and he ended up paying ₹1 Lakh to them. The application agents, however, sent him derogatory messages asking him to pay more. He and his family are under great trauma, he told police.

Based on the complaint, a case was registered and investigation was taken up.

During the investigation, the technical surveillance was sought and the culprits were traced near Ramphal Chowk in Dwarka. In an initial recce by police, it was noticed that a huge call centre on the first, third and fourth floor of a building in Dwarka Sector -7 has been run for the last two years in the Name of Fly High Global Services and Technology. “A raid was conducted at above premises and it was found that the whole syndicate was being run through employing 134 female tele-callers, 15 male callers and 3 team leaders by owner Anil kumar, who is the mastermind,” DCP Yadav said.

The probe revealed that the accused had purchased 300 SIM cards in the name of Silpani International and were using 100 SIM cards out of this for the purpose of sending derogatory WhatsApp messages to compel victims to go with their extortion threats.The leftover 200 Sim Cards were termed as spam and were discarded by the accused.

Police said the accused, in association with Chinese loan application firms, were extorting huge amount of money from innocent victims and have so far siphoned an amount of ₹10 crore to two Chinese people namely “Mr. Albert and Mr.Trey”. They themselves have got about ₹3 crore as commission since March 2021, police said adding that the accused used to keep in touch with their Chinese counterparts using multilingual Ding Talk app.

Police said that while the four accused have been arrested, including the mastermind and other three who used to provide data to callers to make calls, the 134 female staff and 15 male staff employed to run this scam were served notices to join investigation.

Police said that the syndicate was operating in a very clandestine manner under criminal conspiracy from Sector -7 Dwarka. The tele-callers used to threaten the Chinese loan fraud victims by sending messages with derogatory remarks and morphed photographs of victims and their relatives as the victim had given access to media on their phones. Finding no other way, victims used to pay the amount asked by accused.