Cyberabad cops bust instant loan fraud, nab six

The suspects lured victims by hosting loan apps on Google Play Store promising attractive interest rates.

Hyderabad: The Cyberabad Cybercrime police nabbed six persons, including a woman, in connection with illegal instant personal loan apps like ‘Cash Mama’, ‘Loan Zone’ and ‘Dhana Dhan’ here on Tuesday. Police seized laptops, desktops and mobile phones apart from freezing 18 bank accounts which had Rs.1.52 crore.

The arrested persons were K Sharath Chandra from Kokapet, the CEO and director of Onion Credit Private Limited and Cred Fox Technologies Private Limited, Pushpalatha and BV Chaitanya, both directors of Cred Fox Technologies Private Limited, B Venkatesh and Sachin Deshmukh, both collection agents and Syed Ashiq, a team leader in Onion Credit Private Limited.

Following a complaint by a private employee against the firm for allegedly harassing him to repay a loan, the Cybercrime team raided the firm’s office near Biodiversity Junction and arrested them.

“They were offering small loan amounts via different apps and collecting payment by way of harassment and blackmailing. These loan apps are available in Google Play Store. There are a lot of innocent people who got attracted and lost money and got cheated,” Cyberabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar said.

Onion Credit Pvt Ltd and Cred Fox Technologies Pvt Ltd both are owned by Sharath Chandra. He has two offices in Hyderabad with 110 employees. Both the companies had entered into agreements with nine Non-Banking Financing Companies, he said.

“They developed their own apps in their office in Raidurgam for maintaining the database of customers and placed them in Google Play Store. The Cash Mama app is linked to Onion Credit and the two other apps, Dhana Dhan Loan and Loan Zone, are linked to Cred Fox Technologies,” Sajjanar said.

Both the companies have over 1.5 lakh customers and about 70,000 active customers at present, he said, adding that after sanctioning loans to customers from their app for a period of seven days, they divided customers into different categories of buckets or blocks from the due date to 30 days after the due date.

“To recover the loan from customers, they practice different methods depending upon the bucket they are in, lesser the day after due date, lesser the treatment otherwise treatment will be very harsh, threatening and abusive,” Sajjanar said, adding that these apps were also accessing contact details of relatives and friends of customers and sending them WhatsApp messages defaming the defaulter.

Investigations also revealed that such companies maintain two bank accounts, one account pools up the amount from NBFCs and disburse 75-80 per cent of loan amount by deducting various charges like processing fees, GST, etc. The loan amount paid by customers comes to another account from which in turn it is paid to the NBFCs.

“Notices have been issued to all NBFCs and their managing directors and also to Google to take down such applications because of their criminal activities,” Sajjanar said.

Be careful

• Do not download instant loan apps that do not have proper license
• Do not give personal and bank credentials to anyone
• Go through terms and conditions and verify licenses
• Check whether they have permission from authorities like RBI and District Collector
• Do not download any app that asks access to contacts, files and gallery

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