Hyderabad: In continued crackdown on dubious instant loan apps that cheat and harass people, the Cybercrime branch of Hyderabad Police has arrested a Chinese national who was trying to escape the country.

Zhur Wei, 27, aka Lambo, was arrested at Delhi Airport nearly a week after raids on numerous Indian cities revealed massive multibillion-dollar fraud and extortion that was transferred out of the country in the form of bitcoins.

The arrest of Lambo, a native of Xiangxi province, led to criminal investigations by police in Telangana, Haryana, Karnataka and many other Indian states close to the alleged Chinese mastermind behind the operations.

Previously, police in Hyderabad and Cyberabad had arrested 17 Indian agents working for dubious companies and running call centers in Gurgram and Hyderabad as part of the massive operations aimed first at luring unsuspecting people into obtaining credit. instant loans with exorbitant interest rates ranging from 20-50% and then harass and threaten them if they don’t pay back.

Police officials said Lambo was the head of several instant loan applications operated by four companies Aglow Technologies Private Limited, Liufang Technologies Private Limitd, Nabloom Technologies Private Ltd. and Pinprint Technologies Pvt Ltd.

Hyderabad City Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said the apps were available on Google Playstore and notices had been posted asking Google to remove them immediately.

The companies were registered in Bangalore and had Indian directors. Among the 17 people already arrested are many officials working in call centers in Hyderabad and Gurgram.

“Callers were receiving instructions from their superiors in Jakarta, Indonesia. The entire operation of these loaner devices appears to be handled by Chinese nationals, just as we saw in the multi-million color prediction game fraud investigation dismantled earlier, ”he said. said Anjani Kumar.

Police arrested K Nagaraju from Kurnool District in Andhra Pradesh, an accountant trained in the United States in connection with instant loan fraud. He was one of the main brains behind the call centers that employed 1,100 people to sell the loans, then threatening the defaulters.

“The fraud was so well organized that these companies will send false notices on behalf of the Central Bureau of Investigation and other agencies demanding repayment of the loans. They would even send imprints and copies of the FIR, ”said a senior police official.

Police investigations revealed that the operation was so widespread that 140 million transactions involving a whopping Rs 21,000 crore (US $ 3 billion) took place through these apps in the past few months as there were many willing borrowers. instant loans. They also included a large number of international transactions involving bitcoin.

In a similar operation, Cyberabad police also arrested a certain K Sharath Chandra, an American who made his masters out of the United States, who had developed several loan applications such as Cash Mama, Loan Zone, Dhan Dhan and ran companies like Onion Credit Pvt Ltd and Cred Fox Technologies. . Its companies had entered into an agreement with nine Delhi-based non-bank financial corporations (NBFCs) to provide and collect bank loans without any legal authorization.