Bhubaneswar: EOW Bhubaneswar has frozen an amount of Rs 6.57 crore from four accounts of Mahagram Payments Pvt Ltd during investigation of a fraud loan app case. The EOW had registered a case under Sections 294/506/507/420/467/468/120 of the IPC and 66 D of the IT Act in this connection on April 21.
The EOW had received a series of complaints from victims and Reserve Bank of India relating to illegal functioning of loan apps which are not registered as NBFC under Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act. Economic Offences wing (EOW) Bhubaneswar took up investigation in the case of one such app called ‘KOKO’. It also has a similar version called ‘JOJO’ and more than 1.5 lakh people have downloaded these apps, including many from Odisha, an EOW official said.
“During investigation, it was ascertained that once these fake loan apps are downloaded in mobile phone, small amounts ranging from Rs 3000 to Rs 5000 gets credited through link or through UPI to the customers Bank account. Once the amount is credited to the customer’s Bank account, within a week the customer is asked to repay the amount along with an excessive rate of interest. On denial to pay the high rate of interest, the customer is humiliated in many ways,” the official said.
Obscene messages and indecent pictures along with abusive texts are sent to his/her whatsapp number and also to others on his/her contact list. The victims who had downloaded KOKO loan app were sent small amounts from a company named Mahagram Payments Private Ltd which is not registered with RBI as an NBFC. The company through its recovery agents placed whatsapp and live calls to the victims humiliating/abusing them with foul language to return the money with upto five times rate of interest within a week, the EOW stated.
“The accused company collected the refunds from victims through one of its customer firms – IWT India, Gurgaon. All the said transactions were made using many layers to avoid/confuse the police/ law enforcement agencies. To prevent further extortion and illegal money lending, EOW has frozen an amount of Rs 6.57 Crores in different account of accused company.”
As this company/ App has used many complicated and technical layers/ routes in order to evade detection and confuse police, we are taking help of technical experts/ bank officials/ chartered accountant etc. Three special teams of EOW are working on this case in different states like Maharashtra, Bihar, UP and New Delhi. We are also in touch with Telangana/ Hyderbad police, the official added.
The EOW has issued an Advisory on Illegal Loan Apps, which states:
In order to contain these types of crime and to create general awareness among the public, it is hereby advised/ requested to the public that not to take any loans from unregistered/ illegal loan apps available on Internet and Playstore as the loan apps on pretext of advancing loan, access/ hack all information from the customers phone, which may later be used by the company to perpetrate some other financial crime. Such loan apps also harass the customer by charging not only a high rate of interest but on failure to repay the same, harass them by sending obscene and indecent representation of the customers photos to their contact list. Hence, on failure of repayment of loan , the consequences has to be borne not only by the customer but also by their family members and friends/contacts. Many times money is also credited just after downloading the APP without actually asking/ requesting money.
In some states, many people have committed suicide being blackmailed / continuously humiliated by the recovery agents of these illegal loan APPs. Not only the borrowers but their family members are also harassed. All are advised that one should avoid downloading/ using these illegal loan APPs.
Even if someone has already downloaded/ taken loan, they should not surrender/ tolerate the abusive/ harassing behavior/ torture but instead report the matter to police. And in no case they should take the extreme steps like committing suicide.
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