Gang held for running exortion' via loan app

Hyderabad: A gang of five interstate loan app cybercrime recovery agents involved in financial exploitation of borrowers after sending them morphed obscene videos to extort money, were arrested by sleuths of Rachakonda Cybercrime Police.

The accused, Ashuthosh Mishra, 22, with co-accused Prince Pal, got introduced to a Chinese national Gina on Telegram.

Gina provided links containing details of loan app borrowers to Mishra and Pal, D.S. Chauhan, Rachakonda police commissioner said in a press meet here on Wednesday.

Gina, who is absconding, was consistently providing the accused with a daily link, user ID, and password containing the personal information of the loan app borrowers.

The job of Mishra and Pal was to send explicit and threatening messages to borrowers on their Whatsapp numbers, Chauhan said. They also sent morphed obscene photos with those of the borrowers' for extracting additional money when they failed to repay, he said.

As part of their illegal activities, the accused provided an instant loan of '10,500 to a victim Shaik Abdul Bari, through ‘Handy Loan App’ and extracted '2,49,433 from him by circulating morphed photos.

The other accused arrested were identified as Lovemeet Saini, Prashant Kumar Tanwar, Vikas Sharma, who all operate from their native place Gurgaon in Haryana.

Based on a complaint lodged by Abdul Bari, the cybercrime investigation officer (IO) collected technical evidence. Realising that the fraudsters were operating from Gurgaon, a special team arrested them from Haryana, police sources said.

Mishra and Pal were also earlier involved in similar offences in Cyberabad.

Police seized three laptops, six mobile phones, 18 SIM cards and Rs 1.50 lakh cash from the accused and produced them before the court.

Chauhan urged the public to report cybercrimes on helpline number 1930 or on www.Cybercrime.gov.in.