Chinese Man, Head Of Rs 21,000-Crore Loan App Scam, Arrested In Delhi

The Hyderabad police have arrested a Chinese national as part of its ongoing investigation into a multi-crore online loan scam involving a large network of companies that charged interest as high as 36 per cent from their victims, and then harassed its borrowers.

Chinese national Zhu Wei (alias Lambo) was intercepted at the Delhi Airport on Wednesday when he was trying to leave the country. The 27-year-old, who belongs to China's Jiangxi province, was arrested today, the police said.

According to the police, Wei is the overall head of operations of the illegal loan apps run by four companies - Aglow Technologies, Liufang Technologies, Nabloom Technologies, and Pinprint Technologies.

A police investigation - launched after three people, including a techie, died by suicide on alleged harassment by online loan sharks - revealed that so far these firms have made at least 1.4 crore financial transactions, worth nearly Rs 21,000 crore.

The transactions, bulk of which happened over the last six months through payment gateways and bank accounts linked to these companies, the police said. A large number of international transactions have also happened through bit coins, they added.

Another employee, K Nagaraju from Andhra Pradesh's Kurnool District, was also arrested. He allegedly played a key role in operation of call centres which reportedly threatened, harassed and abused borrowers.

With this, the number of people arrested by the Hyderabad Police in this scam has gone up to 18.

Parallelly, police in Cyberabad, Rachakonda and Andhra Pradesh have arrested more people in the multi-city scam, which also has footprints in Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Bengaluru - from where call centres were operated.

Questioning of the accused revealed that another Chinese nation - Yuan Yuan (alias Sissi and Jennifer) - had set up operations in India. She is presently abroad, the police said.