Hyderabad police arrest Bengaluru duo operating loan app call centre

Over a year after the Telangana police began cracking down on the loan app firms tormenting defaulters with heavy interests, abusive calls, such businesses are still thriving.

The Hyderabad police has last week arrested two persons Shabbir Alam and Umakanth Yadav residents of Bengaluru running one such call centre from Koramangala named Skylinks Technology Private Limited.

Like several other app based loan shark companies, Skylinks is also backed by a Chinese national. The mastermind in the present case Chen Chaoping is in China, police said.

Chinese national Chaoping was earlier operating a loan app call centre Golden Bag Technologies Private Limited in Bengaluru. Alam worked as supervisor and Yadav as the IT Manager in this centre. In 2020, suspecting arrests by the Police which began probing the loan apps fraud and crimes, Chaoping went back to China, closing down the call centre.

But after some time, Chaoping contacted Alam and Yadav, instructing them to run a call centre by introducing new loan apps designed by him named Ocean Rupee, Life Wallet, Maloo Wallet, Elephant cash, Box Cash and Dutta, hosted on Google Play Store

The accused hired about 100 tele-callers and opened a new call centre at Koramangala and trained the tele-callers on extorting money from the victims.

“When innocent people download these apps, permissions for gallery, contact list and location access are obtained by the app. These are required for providing a loan for a short period, failing which the borrower has to pay a very huge interest. When the person is incapable of repaying the amounts, the accused post their photos on social media platforms by morphing their photos. Threatening calls are also made,” a Cyber Crime official of Hyderabad police said.

In the present case, the police were acting on a complaint of a 30-year-old Hyderabad woman in December.

“The woman from Rethibowli stated that she took loans from different loan applications amounting to Rs two lakhs and after seven days, she started receiving threatening, abusive calls from different whats-app numbers. Calls were also made to her colleagues, relatives. The tele-callers threatened that they will give her number to 500 different men,” the police said.

Alam (36), director of Skylinks, is a native of Rourkela, Odisha and Yadav (30) is the additional director and a native of Mau, Uttar Pradesh.

The police have seized 19 mobile phones, 63 laptops, and two debit cards.

“The public are again cautioned not to download any unauthorized loan apps which steal confidential information from your phone,” a senior official said.

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