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A loan scam amounting to INR 21,000 Crores (USD 280 Mn) has been doing the round in Indian media.

The report here alleges that some transactions also used digital wallets:

 Link1  (https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/hyderabad-cops-freeze-75-accounts-holding-423-crore-over-money-lending-scam-2342691?amp=1&akamai-rum=off)
 Link 2 (https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/chinese-man-head-of-rs21-000-crore-loan-app-scam-arrested-in-delhi-2346003?amp=1&akamai-rum=off)

What they found was a record of several transactions amounting to a total of 21000 Crores in form of lending and borrowing with high rates of interest. This was being run by a Chinese national using android apps ans a network of call centers in India.

I wonder if any of you have come in direct contact or know someone who has interacted with these people. It seems like a network of P2P lending which turned sour due to the sheer scale and harassment of borrowers which even led to a tech worker's suicide.

Thank you for the information. indeed this is very vulnerable and needs to be avoided, considering that India has a very neat way of committing this type of fraud. although not all, and although encouraged by one person who is a Chinese citizen, it certainly adds to the image of trust in India getting worse. Just imagine, just by using the Android application, this can happen, especially if you use hardware that has a larger capacity weight.

The war pressure is rising between India and China on the border issue. The loan scam is being related with the Chinese application developers. More people have ended their lives out of the pressure given from the loan providing application. This loan scam is termed to be a way to track and gather data about the users. This way it is planned to create internal violence within the country. I don't know how this gonna be true.

We have something like that in our country and they are many of these here they have an application where they offer 10 to 20?% interest what's worse is the hidden charges, and if you failed to pay on time, they are going to harass you on social media, glad that our SEC have issued warnings against these loan application loan scam are also operated here by Chinese they made it a country to country operation.

Third world countries are very vulnerable to these type of scams. People with low knowledge about these schemes get easily tricked by bad actors, they don’t even verify the legitimacy of a particular company and blinded by high returns of their investments. Even if the SEC imposed strict regulations and warnings many people are still ignorant to this matter.

I didn't come into direct contact with this scam. But why are always the big scam schemes based out of India? The reputation of the country is so bad that now already attracts foreigners to setup their scams in India? Honestly, I wish the Indian government would go harder against the scams. There should be much harder punishments for scammer with 10 year prison sentences and more.

Indian scam call centers are definitely branching out their scam expertise. This is the first time that I have heard of such scam, most Scam Call Center in India is doing Tech Support Scams, IRS Scams, Refund Scams and Vacation Scams, although there are some that meddles with cryptocurrency, I never bat an eye because most scammers tend to go for the cold hard cash. This scams are really tainting the reputation of the hardworking and honest Indians, even their people are mad at these type of people. This one scam though is something that is pretty impressive because they even have an app to make it look legitimate.

India has one of the cheapest and most widespread internet and telecommunication infrastructure compared to any other part of the world. Couple this with a huge base of English speaking young population looking for jobs but staying unemployed. A lot of Indian citizens regularly suffer as they have money siphoned out of their bank accounts as young people masquerading as bank employees will call and compel you to divulge important information.
The worst to suffer are the elderly in India as well a west. The videos by Jim Browning are heartbreaking at times.

The law and order is very lax and outdated in catching and prosecuting these criminals. These are just the limitations on technical capabilities. Police in major metropolis have smartened up and have been busting a lot of these scams. The scammers just shift to jurisdictions in the hinterland where a police station incharge would have a hard time operating his own smart-phone, let alone catch the relatively high-tech scammers.


When you say SEC, Does that mean its USA you are talking about. It'll be great if you can share some links to such cases and what was done to manage them.


The chinese are intelligent scammers adept at all forms of cyber espionage, cyber bullying and setting the narrative. Just look at what Justin Sun has pulled off with TRON through sheer marketing and social media warfare. Yet, Indian media and establishment is yet only capable of linking everything to chauvinism and nationalism. Even if the Chinese were gathering data about Indian users and somehow undermining the establishment, nobody at the top cares about the intricacies. They would rather engage in street warfare and inciting communal divisions to benefit and solidify their vote base.

I've thought of an article that just popped out on my feed that's related to a scam caught on airport and when I've compared that news, this seems to be exact as it is. Chinese nationals were caught before flights and an Indian colleague was also caught.

Loan apps scam: Chinese held at IGI before flight (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/loan-apps-scam-chinese-held-at-igi-before-flight/articleshow/80037107.cms)

This is "easy scam" in the India. People are very broke and desperate for getting quick loans which makes them susceptible to enrol into such fraud processes.
Literally I am also getting big amount of messages every day who ask for KYC details and OTP's without any hesitance. The unbelievable thing is, how they get our mobile numbers and how do they dare to publish their scam apps and offers to us.

There are some apps like Dhani App, who lend money but are based on trusted company however, more similar apps started to get published after pandemic outset thus making it confusing for other people. Many of them got screwed due to this.

Thanks for the link. That article too talks about bitcoin being used for high value transactions.


The media seems busy with other issues so for now this is just another "banking scam". Nobody seems worried and its not a major political issue. RBI has issued a warning stating consumers to beware of loan apps. They have some kind of loan aggregator app. Like an Uber for loans. These connect to the Chinese run apps which start demanding repayment in 7 days. The recent surge in BTC prices may have been a factor for the lenders to pressurize the people. This articles shares (https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/010121/loan-app-scam-majority-of-victims-are-educated-youth-and-it-professio.html) some details about how people took loans during the pandemic to meet immediate expenses and were then harassed on social media in front of friends and relatives leading to 3 suicides.

I hope the Indian tele-callers who were part of the call center workforce harassing these people are dealt strictly by law.

I am sorry for what is happening in a nation like India and in the midst of the pandemic crisis. I think that government entities should be vigilant of these fraudulent apps so as not to allow them to operate under any circumstances. I think the security measures and controls have failed because if it had been different, these apps would not reach the citizens.

Yeah he was taken into custody in pretty dramatic fashion right at the airport. Say whatever we may about the communal tendencies of our present government, they don't go easy when it is time to flex muscles. Everybody remembers how certain rich businessmen were allowed to "slip through" in earlier times.

You are right about how huge that figure is. At a time when people were struggling to have ends meet, this whole nexus was operating to entice these desperate people, charge them exorbitant interest rates and nobody even got a whiff till 3 people committed suicide. A search for loan apps on Google store throws up hundreds of results. For those who haven't used such an app, you wouldn't even know they exist. Lets just hope that the news doesn't get buried and the whole nexus is caught. Pretty sure that many people are falling prey to these apps.

Everyone is blaming the "Chinese" running the business but nobody said a word about one other thing:


The ones doing the blackmail and the verbal abuse that might have led to the suicides were Indian nationals, they were doing the entrapment they were doing blackmail, if I'm telling somebody how he can scam somebody and he goes on scamming him and threatening him who is morally to blame more?
Yeah, let's blame China and forget that the ones pulling the trigger were your own citizens.

Easy loans always have hidden agenda butbthe financial status of the people get them trapped in such traps and en up paying huge or even giving up their life. Heard that those loan apps taken sensitive data like private photos, contacts and call history of someone who took loan which was later used to blackmail the defaulters. I think this should be taken care if government since it looks like exceeding the limits given by government.

When it comes to China vs india do these people just realize that they are making wrong mistakes not just it would cost them years in jail but also have fights ivey them in nations.
Scams are really common thank you for sharing your news. I do think that the most simple minded people do get caught up in things like these but now they have the guy I do hope something can be done to return the money of those poor people.


There is no such thing like easy loans!!!
You need to trust banks more in this case.


Banks ?? Collateral?? Even without all this you would have to wait lonnnngggg.... I have to wait almost a year to get my student loan through in the end taking normal loan from other people are the only options. Banks don't help man !!

When a stand-up comedian in the past said that Chinese love their money, I did not think it is by this much. These people would really organize a large scale scamming organization like this amidst the heavy hitting of the pandemic outside of their own country where people will easily persecute and generalize them. It's like these people are made to withstand criticisms from other people long as they profit from it. Quite sickening if you ask me. That's why Loan Sharks are a booming business in third-world countries. These people know how important money is to a poor joe and would do what it takes to make sure the person they are interested in would take a loan from them.

You are right. The present situation in our country is such that there is free media only to put up a face to the world. You can ask questions but not to those in power. Why? Well because they are in power and must have the best of everyone in their minds when doing something. If you question them, that just means you are an Elitist/ Intellectual==>Leftist/ Commie==>Anti-national, in that order.

Though I wouldn't under-play the Chinese factor so easily. Nor should any of the other countries that have seen Facebook/ Twitter propaganda distort the narrative. Twitter is a strange beast. There is the Kashmir story where Pakistani handles do their best to exploit. During the recent standoff, both sides were busy trying to portray it their own way. While these were on a strategic scale, such scams being run by individuals aren't much of a surprise considering how fast the Chinese adapt and grab an opportunity.

And yeah, there are those of us who still question the media narrative and want these people to be brought to law.

The Indian tele-callers were the biggest cause behind the suicides because they would know the best ways to harass a fellow citizen. The Chinese were their just to manage the shows and "invest". The story has pretty much already lost steam in mainstream media.

I have always said that you can't trust Chinese people, not because of any racist thing, because of political. Chinese people who managed to get away from china and lives somewhere else, and lives a decent life is still 100% fine and they are great people.. probably? I mean humanity is not great in any race frankly but they are at least as bad as any other race let's say.

But anyone who is Chinese and stays Chinese and doesn't run away from the communist party, means that they are tied to it, and that communist party of china is willing to let the whole world destroyed if it means they will be the last ones to die, I am not even joking, offer China an option like "the whole world will die nation by nation, each nation will die for one month, and the last nation to die will be yours", they will take that deal, they are that devil and evil.

Heard about this recently. Sad to see these things happening even after so many crypto related scams have been revealed in the last couple of years.

The scammers smartly constructed Ponzi style schemes and gullible people fell for it. They probably didn't care about checking reviews or anything and got greedy due to which they got screwed.

Always do your research people before investing in any sort of business(Crypto or non-Crypto).

The level of harrassment is just too much in such loan apps! My wife started receiving calls from one such app's collection agency for some other person at least 3 times daily! Turned out that the loan was taken by a guy who was our car salesman working for Nissan! Since the car is in my wife's name, that guy had my wife's number saved in his mobile! So they have hacked into his mobile to get the phonebook and randomly calling people to let them know that this guy is a loan defaulter! This is just next level!

I am glad that finally police has started noticing it and taking action! These miscreants should be jailed!

In the news saw about the loan scam in India. (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/story/chinese-national-among-two-arrested-hyderabad-online-instant-loan-scam-1754673-2020-12-31) The Chinese people are found connected to the scam. As of now a small team has developed fee applications from an Singapore based company and has issued instant loans and getting heavy interest on repayment. In a very short time period more than ₹21000 crore has been transacted. This is huge and a 27 aged Chinese nationality is found to be the head.

I am surprised such things don't get spark in mainstream media. A scam worth suge high isn't shown on tv by any channel and merely reported as news article. i think that's too reported merely because there is a Chinese connection. But coming back to the point I am surprised to see such a huge number of 21000 crore. I believe this would be the worth of total loans. These media houses have a habit of attaching huge number to make stories look attractive. This must be the amount of loans these people must have given. And when they are demanding their own money back they have been made the culprits of the whole thing. Technically, almost every NBFC in India does the following.
1. Charges exorbitant rates as high as 20-30%
2. Harras users when they don't repay back the money

Technically the only fault they did was not registering themselves with RBI and meeting the statutory requirements.

I think all the people talking and comparing this with bank loans Don't really know the concept of NBFCs in India. The people who are not able to get loans through banks generally approach such NBFCs. Sub standard loan groups are generally catered by these companies but their registration is mandatory by law.

Some of the posters have already pointed out that apart from a couple of Chinese nationals, most of the scamsters were Indian nationals. So I don't think that there is any point in highlighting the "Chinese" link. The Indian media want to sensationalize the news and may resort to such cheap tactics. I hope the authorities will not get carried away by it. The primary concern should be to help those who got victimized as a result of this scam.

If you take a look at those particular loan apps, they don't need any collateral all they need is your KYC documents which can be given by anyone who doesn't even have any job. But these apps will take some amount for the interest which is a huge amount compared to the loan we are taking and the remaining one will go into the bank account and the loan money should be paid full in a certain time like one week or 10 days if not then the issues will start to raise for the defaulter. But in banks, they will give the full loan amount and collect the interest rate along with the capital only.

The concern isn't related to just one app though. If you search on playstore, there are thousands of "instant loan" apps and many of them are based on India as well. These loan providers doesn't give loan for many months, they give for tenures like 7 days or 15 days with very very high rate of interest. I have had experience with one such app, and if you are late for repaying by even one single day, they will start to call your contacts and threaten them even. It's high-time that government should do something about these apps and their owners. These app owners and their collection team should be immediately jailed without any parole for atleast 10 years. Their harrasment has lead to suicide of many victims.

They didn't hack anything.
All these shady apps require access to your contacts, the moment you install them and agree to give them access is the moment the owners of the app have all your contact details, phone number and name, and they did that for thousands so they probably have quite a large database, now a bit of linking the names and the phones and if you made the stupid mistake of saving your married lover's phone in it you're done for it.

So it is highly possible they have yours too, or some of your other members of your family.


Do you think fleeing a country is that easy?
I've lived under a communist regime for two decades, there were a few that escaped to the western countries but most didn't, not because they liked the regime but because of means to do it, language barriers once you're out, leaving families behind. It's easy to say that from far away but try to pack your bags kiss your family goodbye, maybe forever, knowing that you leave them in a country that sees them as the family of a traitor and embark with no money to a country you know nothing about.
Picture yourself in a foreign country with no relatives, no housing, knowing 10-20 words, a little money in your pocket, and no ideas what to do next.
And suddenly you're going to care less about politics and more about what's for dinner.

There are scams all around the world every year, we are talking about the whole world here and there is really no reason to tie it to Chinese nationals aside from the obvious political rivalry and how china wants to get everyone's money to their own nation. But scamming is a big part of the world that will always forever continue, there were scammers over 3 thousand years ago, and there are ones today as well, as long as there are ways people could make easy money, they will continue to do that without a stop.

Unfortunately scamming is the easiest way to become super rich, but it is also the most dangerous way because there is very small chance you could actually become super rich without disturbing anyone important and when you do that, you end up getting chased a lot more, you can't just stop and say "haha scammed you, bye bye" because they will chase you everywhere. Sure some get away with it, but majority do not.

There are a lot of laws around this. You can't even open a loan providing company or what we call a Non-Banking Financial Company in India without the approval of RBI. There are penalties if you open one without permission. Once you get registration you are regularly administered and can be sued if you do anything wrong. So I think every borrower should keep this caveat in their minds whenever they seek money to only take loans from apps or websites which are registered with RBI generally the companies would show this as a bold Banner because RBI mandates them to do so I think it's the borrower who should stay aware about all such things. 

You should look in to both the sides. In many cases, the loans are being taken by young people who are addicted to gambling or games such as online rummy. These inexperienced people believe they can become millionaires overnight and then get ruined financially by chasing after the losses. At least in 50% of the cases, the victims will be those who took loans to indulge in gambling.

Let me guess: Scamming is an easy way to become super rich - that's why you bought your Bitcointalk-name on the black market, right? You are not RealMalatesta....

Thanks for informing us, Let me add something additionally concerning this news, This Chinese man is presently captured and his named was Zhu Wei and its 55 years old and has a place with Jiangxi region. It was Hyderabad police who capture him while he was leaving the country. I am wondering that the Indian government will in general boycott PUBG and TikTokbut still somehow allowed the transaction of 21,000 CR.

LOL.. the Indian government is run by a few illiterate retards, who will go after a bounty hunter who receives $100 for his two months of work, but they don't have the balls to go after the oligarchs and criminals who loot billions of USD. In this case, I believe that the transaction was divided into several smaller amounts, directed into tens of thousands of different bank accounts. Obviously, the Chinese loan sharks turned out to be much more intelligent and smart compared to the illiterates who run the Indian government.

I think there's a possibility of hidden power trying to make Indians sell their bitcoin because the amount of bitcoins owned by Indians is huge.
And this is not the first time we're seeing this like News faking bitcoin ban.

The number of Bitcoin users may be quite large in India (anywhere from 2 million to 10 million). But the volume of Bitcoin held by them is quite small when compared to the case in other countries. Out of the total circulating supply of 18.7 million, only around 2-3% may be held by Indians. Because India was quite late to the party. Bitcoin hype started here from 2017 onwards, while in other countries the adoption started much earlier.

In this times of nothingness, one must have the courage to sacrifice all just to survive. I know many were trapped by these scammer due to uncertainties of events happening to the world and its sad seeing these people. Awareness to these kind of acts must be totally be prioritized.

Yeah, the similar information is mentioned in the OP. I am surprised how such kind of scams are possible when lending is a kind of thing which involves a lot of paper work in real life and person taking money no matter how innocent or naive, will always read all the terms and conditions mentioned. Also wonder why they didn't take the help of police when they were forced to make repayments with astonishingly high interest rates.

Maybe some local authorities are also involved or maybe because they signed on the papers with those interest rates is the reason even the police is unable to interfere much but at least the police can ensure they cannot threaten others for repayment.

this is odd. in my country, it's the Indians that provide loans with high-interest rates. they take every penny of the small businesses which the loan is widely known as 56, its basically taking a loan of 10K and the interest will be 2K, this is about 20%. the only difference is that they don't access the online data of their customers.

feel sorry for those who committed suicide due to their loans and humiliated online.

I don't know how this is related to crypto because the loans they provide it seems were in fiat and with absurdly high interest rates to make the borrowers suffer but it has no connection with crypto I believe.

I am actually surprised they were able to get their money back from victims by abusing, defaming and harassing them as mentioned in the article because any grown men would just avoid any of these threats and ignore them. I mean these companies were running illegally so they can't force their client/borrowers into paying them legally.

The micro loans have nothing to do with cryptocurrency and they are providing high interest loans without regulations from RBI and it is illegal as it could break people and there are people who committed suicide because of the high interest rates.

Harassing the victims is their first duty if they are not able to pay the loan in time, they then call the relatives and inform them that you are owing them money and these sort of harassment will break people.

I disagree, it's not the borrower's fault at all for failing to check if a company is registered or not, it's the RBI and the government should check if there are any institutions or company which are doing illegal business by providing short term loans and collecting heavy interest and also insulting and threatening the victims. Government should order playstore to ban such apps, because there are many people who might need money urgently and they aren't really educated enough and they get trapped into such apps, should we blame them? It's the government who should prevent such apps and companies from doing their business in our country.

And this is a really critical problem - with the help of cryptocurrencies and fraud with them, you can deceive people in big quantity and not bear any punishment for this, because you can very easily hide yourself.
If some impure microfinance organization working with Fiat will behave like this, it will immediately be closed, convicted, fined and returned (not always, but still) the money to the victims.
With cryptocurrency, you sometimes can't even know who is really behind all this and you have no one to complain to. Until this is fixed, any talk that "everyone needs cryptocurrency" is as pointless as fighting Poseidon by throwing spears into the water.

I don't think it's only 2-3% Indians there's a good possibility that this '%' could be much more.


I don't think India was late to the party there's also a good possibility that the number is much more disregarding Hype.