Providing/offering loans illegally, collecting exorbitant rates of interest, harassing the borrowers for recovery and impersonation were some of the crucial findings forming part of the charge sheet filed by the Cyber Crime police of Hyderabad recently in the multi-crore alleged financial fraud involving app-based instant loan companies.
The investigators have also mentioned about the six victims of the loan-app companies who killed themselves in the State.
Speaking to The Hindu , a senior police officer associated with the investigation of the case said as the final report from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory is still pending, they have fast forwarded the process of filing the chargesheet with a view to prevent the accused from getting bail.
Of the 21-odd accused persons arrested by the city police, except Zhu Wei alias Lambo from Jiangxi, China, all others were enlarged on bail.
They have also mentioned the names of some of the absconding accused, including Yuan Yuan alias Jennifer.
“Definitely, we were in a hurry to file the chargesheet as we don’t want the prime accused Zhu Wei to get out on bail,” he said, adding that Zhu Wei was the key person behind the operations of several loan-app companies in India.
He said that soon after getting the detailed and final report from the CFSL, the police would file a bunch of chargesheets clubbed together. “We must know what is in the laptops of Zhu Wei and other accused, before filing the ‘main chargesheet’.
The process has slowed due to COVID-19,” the officer said, adding that a technical scientist analysing the technical evidence submitted by them is on leave.
In the chargesheet, the police have also mentioned that first the money went to Virgin Island and from there to Shanghai, China, to prove the role of China-based companies in the fraud. They also mentioned that the firms used call spoofing technology in their call centres to contact the borrowers.
In the last week of December, police roped in financial experts and data analysts to go into voluminous data pertaining to more than 1.50 crore loan transactions involving nearly ₹21,000 crore, apart from cryptocurrency.
