Bhubaneswar: The Proprietor of Firm IWT India, Mohd Javed Saifi, is being brought from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh to Bhubaneswar in Odisha on the strength of three days transit remand for his production in the Court of SDJM Bhubaneswar in connection with fake loan apps case.
The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Bhubaneswar, with the help of UP/Ghaziabad Police, arrested Saifi, on 4-4-2022 from Ghaziabad. He was produced before the Court of CJM, Ghaziabad which allowed the EOW to take him on transit remand.
IWT India was working/ used as a front/shell company to divert the money. Its Proprietor Saifi used to get a small commission for it. It was further ascertained that multiple crores of rupees have been transacted through the account of IWT India, and the account holder Mohd Javed Saifi could not explain this huge transaction.
Earlier, in this case, an amount of Rs 6.57 Crore was frozen from four accounts of Mahagram Payments Pvt Ltd. Investigation of the case is continuing. The roles of other Partners/ accomplices involved in running such fake loan apps are under investigation.
EOW Bhubaneswar had received a series of complaints from victims and the Reserve Bank of India relating to the illegal functioning of loan apps that are not registered as NBFC under the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act. Economic Offences Wing (EOW) Bhubaneswar took up investigation in respect of one such loan APP “KOKO”. This also has a sister/ related version called “JOJO”. More than 1.5 lakh people have downloaded this APP including many from Odisha.
During the investigation, it is ascertained that these fake loan apps once downloaded in one’s mobile Playstore, small amounts ranging from 3000 to 5000 are credited through a 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 concerned customer is humiliated in many ways. Obscene messages and indecent pictures along with abusive texts are sent to his WhatsApp number and as well as to his contact list.
During further investigation, it was ascertained that the victims who had downloaded KOKO loan APP from the Play store were credited small amounts from one company named Mahagram Payments Private Ltd which is not registered with RBI as an NBFC.
The accused company through its recovery agents placed WhatsApp and live calls to the victims humiliating/ abusing them with foul language to return the money with up to 5 times the rate of interest within a week.
The accused company credited the said amount but collected the refunded amount from the victims through one of its customer firms namely IWT India, Gurgaon. All the said transactions were made using many layers to avoid/confuse the police/ law enforcement agencies.
In this regard, as the first step to prevent further extortion and illegal money lending by the said accused company and its customer IWT India, EOW had frozen an amount of Rs 6.57 Crores in different accounts of the accused company.
As this company/ App has used many complicated and technical layers/ routes in order to evade detection and confuse the police, we are taking the help of technical experts/ bank officials/ chartered accountants, etc.
Three special teams of EOW are working on this case in different states like Maharashtra, Bihar, UP and New Delhi. They are also in touch with Telangana/ Hyderbad police.
