Visakhapatnam city police busted a loan app gang operating from Pakistan, committing financial crimes. In this regard, the police have arrested 16 people, including 9 people who were directly involved in this case and a mastermind and that crypto currency worth Rs 60 lakh was seized.
City Police Commissioner Dr. Shankhabrata Bagchi revealed that the police have concluded that the accused opened 132 accounts through innocent people and identified that transactions worth Rs 200 crore were made through the bank accounts.
A man from Visakhapatnam borrowed Rs 3,200 from a loan app last year and paid it back, but the cyber criminals did not stop harassing him. As a result, he committed suicide. Later, the cyber crime police took up the investigation on the complaint of the deceased’s wife.
After examining the threats received on the victim’s WhatsApp, the police found that they came from a Pakistani IP address. It was confirmed that the transactions were made through bank accounts in the states of Assam and Gujarat. With this, police teams were sent to other states and six people who opened the respective bank accounts were arrested.
In the same case, Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner revealed that Srinivasa Rao was arrested and interrogated and confessed to having given 30 bank accounts to cyber criminals and taken Rs. 12 lakhs. City Police Commissioner Shankhabrata Bagchi said that the roots of the loan app fraud case have been identified in Pakistan and China.
It was found that about 9,000 victims from India were cheated by this gang. The police seized 18 mobile phones, a laptop and 54 cell phone SIM cards from this gang. The police found that the payments made by victims who took loans from an unofficial loan app due to threats from cyber criminals are going to 61 accounts.
They said that they have found that a commission of Rs 1.60 lakh is being paid for transactions worth Rs 1 crore to use a bank account. The CP said that they have found that threatening messages are coming from Pakistan. It has been found that Sambasiva Rao has received a commission of about Rs 4.5 crore from the sale of bank accounts.
When the phones of Dilip and Sandeep were examined along with him, crypto currency worth Rs 60 lakh was detected and confiscated with the help of a hardware.
