Dehradun: Uttarakhand STF on Wednesday claimed to have busted an international gang who defrauded crores of rupees through the Chinese loan app. The STF has arrested a Delhi resident in the case from Goregaon while five masterminds of the gang are said to be Chinese nationals. DGP Ashok Kumar while addressing a presser in this regard, identified the arrested accused as Ankur Dhingri, a resident of Mohan Garden, Uttam Nagar, New Delhi.
A laptop, mobile phone, hard disk and dozens of bank ATM cards, Aadhaar cards, PAN and Metro cards have been recovered from the possession of the arrested accused, Kumar said. The top cop also said that based on the subsequent interrogation of Dhingri and other material evidence, it came to light that the fake loan app racket has duped people of at least Rs 300 across India.
The fraud amount may rise in accordance with further investigation of the 15 apps related to the case. The Chinese members of the gang operated from Hong Kong have been identified as Kuang yongguang alias Bolt (Director of the gang), Miao Zhang alias Cicero, Wanzue Li alias Force, He Zhebo alias Leo (Director) and Difan Wang aka Scott Wang (Director).
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Police have lodged cases under different sections of the IPC including 384-85 (blackmailing) and 419-20, 469 (cheating), DGP Kumar said. He said the frauds were detected based on the technical examination of the laptop of Dhingri. As for the the modus operandi of the gang, the DGP said that the fraudsters used to send scam links to people asking them to download links of apps on the pretext of online loans.
Downloading the links exposed the personal data of the people, he said adding that the fraudsters would send obscene and edited pictures and videos to the victims and blackmailed them by threatening to circulate the images on the internet. Preliminary investigation has revealed that 95 complaints have been registered against the Chinese fake loan apps on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
More than 247 complaints related to the Chinese fake loan app in Uttarakhand have been received by the Cyber crime Police, the DGP said. The Uttarakhand STF has written to the Ministry of External Affairs to provide information about the travel details of the Chinese nationals accused in the case to issue Red Corner notices against them.
It is learnt that accused Ankur Dhingra had traveled to China in 2019-20 to meet the gang leaders. On his return, he started a racket in India through a Chinese fake loan app, police said. Kumar said that a similar gang had been busted last year wherein the 'Chinese Power Bank' app which offered to “double” money in 15 days.
