Loan app racket: 24-year-old Uttarakhand woman and Bengaluru-based man emerge masterminds

A 24-year-old Uttarakhand woman and a Bengaluru-based man have emerged as masterminds of the loan app racket that worked like a corporate, snared thousands and extorted crores from them, according to a special investigation team set up by the Mumbai police. The police said Priyanshi Kandpal and Liang Chi Sheng worked for their Chinese masters.

They sent money to them through over 200 shell companies and cryptocurrencies. The special investigation team (SIT), led by Joint Commissioner (Crime) Suhas Warke, Additional Commissioner Veeresh Prabhu and DCP (Cyber) Hemrajsingh Rajput, has so far arrested 14 people.

The police said Priyanshi, a finance graduate, joined the business at 20 when she had gone to China for further studies. "Having an advantage of speaking and writing Chinese, Priyanshi excelled rapidly and became almost its head for India," said an officer. "Based at Haldwani in Uttarakhand, Priyanshi was in constant touch with the Chinese operatives and Indian recruits. Between 2018 and 2022, she visited China multiple times. She was keeping a close eye on the daily amount disbursed to the victims as loans and the money recovered from them," said the officer. "The money was routed through multiple accounts and sent out of India using cryptos."

Suhas Warke, joint commissioner (crime), addresses the media on their investigation into the loan app racket, on Friday. Pic/Atul Kamble

Liang, also with a finance background, helped their Chinese handlers float hundreds of shell companies and create accounts to siphon off the money. "After a group of Chinese officials visited India in 2018, the whole racket rolled on, it accelerated during the pandemic. Some Indian citizens were chosen as leaders and also taken to China for training and skill development," said an officer from the SIT.

Sheng's family tree has Chinese links, said a source. "Sheng's grandfather had come to India before Independence and settled in Kolkata while he shifted to Bengaluru recently, mostly for working for the racket. His work was to form shell companies using local residents' KYC data and hand over the details to Priyanshi's team. He has floated more than 200 shell companies till now and used to get Rs 3.5 lakh for every company," said an officer.

80GB data recovered

Cops have found 80 GB of data from Sheng's hard drive which has porn-like content. "It has video chats with women. We suspect it was made by Sheng only. But the context of the content is not clear yet," said the officer.

Look-out notices against 2

The Mumbai police have issued two look out notices against two Chinese nationals who are suspected to be the head of the whole racket. One of them has been identified as Liu Yi and the other one is a woman. Both had visited India in 2018. The police have also got hold of CCTV footage from the hotels where the alleged meetings had taken place. They might issue more LOCs against Chinese nationals as their real identity is yet to be established.

Well-oiled racket

The Chinese handlers were in touch with the masterminds and other team leaders through DingTalk app which enabled users to call, chat and share data. More than 203 loan apps were floated on Google Play Store, while many more were shared through SMS or WhatsApp via links. The victims got a portion of the amount they sought. The harassment and extortion would begin after 5 to 7 days.

Different groups of callers

The callers and technical teams formed the backbone of the crime. There were four categories of callers - one would give information about the app, how to upload KYC; the second group called to remind borrowers about the deadline; the third type of callers would press borrowers to pay as soon as possible, at times threatening to make their pictures and videos viral; and the last set of callers abused and harassed the borrowers through different numbers. Most of the agents worked from home.

Syndicate's technical team

The team included people having sound knowledge of the unified payment interface, or UPI. They would create 3 UPI IDs for every account of a shell company and ask the callers to use them for receiving money from borrowers. Each UPI ID was not used for more than 3 days and it would be deactivated by the technical team immediately. The gang also had experts who would test the UPI IDs before giving a green signal to the team to share them with the recovery agents.

Routing money to China

The finance team would track the money flowing in from borrowers. The police have found that the racket generated about Rs 30 crore a day and the money was converted into cryptocurrencies. As soon as an account got more than Rs 10 lakh, the money would be moved out. The racket used crypto wallets to send the extorted amount to China.

‘It was challenging'

"We have saved more than Rs 14 crore of the borrowers and are working on more accounts. It was a mammoth task to investigate and establish the role of every single person. The SIT has worked day and night to unearth an international racket. I would urge citizens to come forward and register FIRs if they have been cheated and not to borrow from such online apps," said Suhas Warke, joint commissioner (crime).

Roles and salaries

Caller Rs 17,000 plus incentive
Team Leader
(each TL had 40 to 45 callers) Rs 30 to 35,000
Most of TLs were made shell company directors and would get commissions
Managers Rs 75,000 plus incentive
The arrested and their roles
Priyanshi Shekharchandra Kandpal, 24, Uttarakhand - Country head
Liang Chi Sheng
39, Bengaluru - second mastermind
Owais Salim Ahmed, 29, Bengaluru - Team leader
Vipul Shankar Gauda, 24, Bengaluru - Team leader
Sneh Samir Somani,
30, Malad - Finance team
Sanjay Virbhan Arora,
28, Gurugram - UPI testing, tech help
Vighnesh Anand, 28, Bengaluru - Team leader, shell company director
Mallayya Chikanayya Kuruba, 24, Bengaluru - Team leader, shell company director
Ajaykumar Arunkumar, 25, Bengaluru - Deputy to Priyanshi
These apart, 4 callers from Karnataka, one from Andhra Pradesh have been arrested