Online Money Lending Scam: Hyderabad Police Freeze Bank Accounts

24 Dec, 2020 13:39 IST|Sakshi Post

In a recent development in the online money lending scam, police have frozen 75 bank accounts. These accounts had a total of ₹423 crore in it. These scammers were operating through mobile apps that are not even approved by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).  

There were a total of 30 apps running their operations in 4 offices. The employees were responsible for calling and luring in potential borrowers. After a person has borrowed money, he was pressured into paying back in as less as a week’s time. The interest will be as high as 35 percent or more. The employees, who are trained in this, will then blackmail and harass the victims.

These raids were conducted simultaneously in Hyderabad and Gurgaon. The operation was busted at multiple offices and around 16 people were arrested. The matter is now under investigation.  

Also Read: Instant Loan Firms In Hyderabad Raided

Sarath Chandra (32) was one of the workers to be arrested. He was responsible for running the illegal money lending operation through two fraud companies called Onion Credit Pvt Ltd and Cred Fox Technologies.

Chandra was running this operation through setting up call centres in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Gurgaon. The employees from these call centres would call potential customers and lure them into taking huge loans. All of this was run through illegal money lending apps. There were more than 1,000 people working in these centres.

These raids were conducted after the suicide cases in Telangana. The state police received several complaints from people facing harassment from online money lenders.

This is not the limit of this illegal operation. There are thousands of such money lending apps available online. It is a huge scam that has lots of background operations running. The scammers used multiple bank accounts, digital wallets and other methods to avoid being caught.

Even RBI released their warning regarding all this. They confirmed that any kind of money-lending operations can be run by banks or non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) that are officially registered under the RBI. Any apps or companies apart from these are not to be trusted.

“These online platforms charge excessive rates of interest and additional hidden charges, adopt unacceptable and high-handed recovery methods and misuse agreements to access data on mobile phones of borrowers,” added the Reserve bank.

RBI asked people to be safe and never to share their KYC details with any unidentified person or unverified apps. Even the police requested any person to come forward and file a complaint if they are facing any harassment or are stuck up in an online money lending situation. 

whatsapp channel
Read More:
More News