Loan app racket busted in Chandigarh with arrest of Chinese national, 20 others

Chandigarh, Sep 16 (IANS) The Chandigarh Police Cyber Cell has busted an illegal instant loan app racket with the arrest of a Chinese national who was the kingpin and was running the racket with 60 people under him, Superintendent of Police Ketan Bansal said on Friday.

Twenty-one accused, including 34-year-old Chinese national Wan Chengua, have been arrested till date in a 10-day operation spanning across five states.

As per the police investigation, the accused were working on online loan applications i.e. Hugo Loan, Coin Cash, AA Loan, AK Loan, Win Credit. The police have requested Google to delete the applications from Play Store.

It was found that they were using virtual number for contact. "We are trying to trace the origin of these virtual numbers as well as other suspects. The accused were using social media applications - Dingtalk, Wechat and GB Whatsapp. Request to obtain the information about the social media accounts of accused have also been sent to verify the IP details and other information about the suspects of the case," Bansal said.

Most of the arrested people were employees of Gurugram-based PC Finance, having some Chinese nationals on top position. "We have verified the previous facts of PC Finance and found that Peter, Tray and Nicoholson were on the top positions and this company was shut down in 2020. Now they have changed their working method and they are running their syndicate from China and have made Parvej Alam, alias Jitu Bhadan and alias Sonu Bhadana, as boss, who is already arrested, of online loan syndicate."

Jeffery Jhu from China, who left India in 2020, is involved in the syndicate and he is managing finance of the online loan application scam.

Arrested accused Anshul Kumar is the main associate of Jhu in India and he is involved in money laundering of about Rs 100 crore.

Also arrested Chinese accused Wan Chengua was working under Jeffery and he paid approximately Rs 35-40 lakh to Kumar, who further delivered the money to Parvej Alam.

The visa and passport of Chengua had expired in 2020.

During the investigation it was revealed that the accused instead of using regular WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram, they were using GB WhatsApp. Similarly, Dingtalk and WeChat applications were used by the fraudsters to commit frauds.

All online loan applications were cheating the money through UPI ID's and they connected with bank accounts. During the investigation some of these accounts were verified and found that transactions in bulk amount are made out in these accounts. Twenty accounts with Rs 50 lakh have been freezed.

It can also assumed that these suspected accounts are involved in money laundering. "We have written to the Enforcement Directorate, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the CBI regarding this. These accounts are opened on the name of companies and enterprises. On verification, some of them were found shell companies and registration has been done by using fake documents," he said.

All accused were produced in a local court on Friday and 18 of them were sent in judicial custody.

DGP Parveer Ranjan met Superintendent of Police Ketan Bansal and DSP (Cyber) A. Venkatesh and appreciated both officers.

He also rewarded the investigation team comprising Inspector Ranjit Singh, Sub-Inspectors K.D. Singh and Parminder Singh, Assistant Sub-Inspector Balwan Singh, Head Constables Rajender Singh, Bahadur Lal, Balwinder Singh, Sunit, Rampal, Gurmeet Singh and Vikas Bastara, Senior Constable Sachin, Constables Pramjeet, Vikas Dahiya, Sonit, Baljeet, Sarvind, Veer Davinder, Ashok, Dinesh, Ombir, Manpreet and Kavita with Rs 75,000 cash and first class certificate for good work.