New Delhi: With the arrest of four persons, the Delhi Police have unearthed a multi-crore Chinese loan application racket which was extorting money from people across India, an official said on Wednesday.
The four accused have been identified as Anil Kumar (35), Alok Sharma (24), Avnish (22) and Kannan (35). Apart from these four, the police have also issued notices to 149 persons who were part of a fake call centre.
Furnishing details, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer District), Brijendra Kumar Yadav, said a complaint was lodged by a man on the NCRP portal, alleging that after getting lured by an advertisement on Facebook regarding hassle-free loan of Rs 50,000, he had downloaded a loan app by the name of ‘On Stream’.
“While downloading this app, it prompted the complainant to give access to his phone’s contacts, gallery etc., which he did. He was granted a loan of Rs 6,870 following which the accused persons started harassing him using his contacts and photographs stored in the gallery of his cellphone,” the DCP said.
To get rid of this problem, the victim paid Rs 1 lakh to the accused persons, but they kept on sending him derogatory messages demanding more money.
“The family was under great trauma,” the officer said.
Based on the complaint, the Cyber Police Station registered an FIR under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and began investigating the matter. Later, Sections 384 (punishment for extortion) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) were added to the FIR.
During the course of the investigation, technical surveillance was used which helped trace the culprits near the Ramphal Chowk in Dwarka.
“The police found that a big call centre was being run from a building in Sector 7, Dwarka, for the past two years in the name of Fly High Global Services and Technology,” Yadav said.
Subsequently, the police conducted a raid and it was found that the whole syndicate was being run by Anil kumar, the mastermind, through 134 female tele callers, 15 male callers and three team leaders.
“They purchased 300 SIM cards by raising a firm in the name of Silpani International, of which 100 were used to send derogatory WhatsApp messages to compel the victims to fall for their extortion threats. The remaining 200 SIM cards were termed as spam which they discarded,” the DCP said.
The accused extorted money from innocent victims in connivance with Chinese loan application firms. They also routed proceeds of crime amounting to Rs 10 crore to two Chinese nationals going by the name of Albert and Trey, and got Rs 3 crore as commission in March.
“The accused created CRM IDs and kept harassing people by morphing their photographs with derogatory remarks,” said the officer.
–IANS