Massive crackdown in Loan App Case: Pune Cyber Crime team raided Banglore call centre arrested 18

Pune police cyber crime team arrested a total of 18 accused, 11 from Banglore and 7 from various parts of Maharashtra. With Investigation and forensic proofs, the team raided a Banglore-based call centre from where 70 lakhs cash with 1 lakh contacts from their database was seized. From 2020 to August 2022 Pune Police received 4778 applications.

Other materials seized from the raid contain 48 handsets, 65 bank accounts,

1 computer, 1 laptop

27 passbook/chequebook,

167 debit/credit cards, 30 Aircel/Visimcards, 1 ATM swipe machine, 15 pan cards, 11 Aadharcard

04 election, Card and 04.

Commissioner of Police, Pune Amitabh Gupta informed Mirror Now, "We have arrested 18 people, seized 70 lakh rupees and 1 lakh contacts from call centre's database. At least these 1 lakh will get relief. We have destroyed a small module of a widespread racket in the country. We are going to write to various concerned authorities of play store, banks, and other stakeholders." While explaining the international links he said, "It's too early to claim but the internet has no boundaries. We have got some leads that pose a possibility of links in other countries."

About the Modus Operandi of this online extortion rackets through small loan applications: Bogus loan applications are made available on the play store or other websites. To download these applications series of permissions are demanded starting from camera, gallery, contacts, SMS, location, microphone, etc. which provides full access to data. Once victims download the application, they get a loan ranging from 500-7000 rupees on an immediate basis. Followed by that when it's time to return the sum interest rate up to 300 percent is charged. If a victim does not pay threat calls, messages are sent. Morphed images, nude images, and morphed documents are sent to scare the victim in order to make them pay.

Currently cyber crime Pune has 2 ongoing cases, the number may increase. In one of those cases, a 30 year old man was duped of 13 lakhs 88 thousand. He went to pay a huge sum as he was caught in the vicious circle of loans. Pune police have appealed to people not to download any such fraudulent applications, nothing comes for free. And even if accidentally logged in to the application not to get frightened due to threat messages instead report it to the police.