International loan app scam that defrauded several to the tune of over Rs 300 crore busted: Cyber police

The enormity of the fraud came under spotlight after a salesman, 38-year-old Sandeep Korgavkar, died by suicide on May 4 this year due to alleged extortion and sexual harassment by loan recovery agents. The accused allegedly called Korgavkar over 50 times and sent his morphed nude photos to people in his locality as well as colleagues. Before ending his life, Korgavkar had approached the Kurar police, which had registered a “non-cognizable” complaint. Following his death, the cyber police started investigating cases of loan app frauds.

One of the cases investigated by cyber police was of a man who took Rs 3.85 lakh from as many as 10 apps. Like Korgavkar, he was harassed by people who called him from 50 different numbers and extorted Rs 15 lakh from him. The cyber police traced the first accused Sudhakar Reddy, 25, to Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh on June 24. Reddy spilled the beans on 13 others who were arrested from Bengaluru in Karnataka, Gurgaon in Haryana, Malad in Mumbai, Nainital in Uttarakhand, and Kangpokpi in Manipur. A majority of the accused were arrested from Bengaluru from where they were allegedly running the racket.

One of the arrested accused is Sanjay Arora, 28, from Gurgaon, who was arrested on July 4. The police found scores of SIM cards in his possession, which he had obtained on forged documents and passed on to other accused who opened bank accounts and shell companies using them. All the bank accounts had transactions running into Rs three to four crore, police said.

Another accused, Sneh Somani, arrested from Malad (west) on July 5, was found in possession of 95 SIM cards.

Somani’s lawyer Ravish Zamindar said, “The investigations are on. We will apply for bail soon. He is being made a scape goat.”

Priyanshi Kandpal, 24, a translator for a Chinese language, was nabbed from Nainital on July 10. Her job was to translate the information received from the other accused in English into a Chinese language and send it to the masterminds abroad, police said.

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Like Kandpal, Liang Shang, 39, arrested on July 11 from Bengaluru, was in touch with masterminds to whom he spoke in a Chinese language, police said. The police have found 80 GB data of pornographic material from his laptop which is suspected to be used for morphing videos of victims, including several women. He is suspected to be using cryptocurrency to siphon off the money to his masters abroad, police said.

The accused were making use of a dialer called “NX Cloud Tele” through which only outgoing calls could be made and which could not be traced back to the accused. The accused, who worked as directors, spoke with their bosses abroad using applications like Ding Talk, Telegram and WhatsApp, police added. The accused have tried to destroy technical evidence and a forensic probe is underway to trace their foreign masters, police said.