Hyderabad police arrest Chinese kingpin of ₹21K Cr online loan scam

Hyderabad police on Thursday (December 31) arrested a 27-year-old Chinese man, the alleged kingpin of a ₹21,000-crore online loan scam while he was trying to leave the country, NDTV reported.

Zhu Wei alias Lambo, a resident of Jiangxi province of China, was the head of the illegal loan apps run by four companies which charged interest up to 36 per cent from borrowers and allegedly subjected them to harassment.

The companies are Aglow Technologies, Liufang Technologies, Nabloom Technologies and Pinprint Technologies.

Wei was intercepted at Delhi Airport by police while he was trying to leave the country.

K Nagaraju, an employee of Wei from Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh was also arrested. Nagaraju allegedly handled the call centres which threatened and abused borrowers.

Police had begun investigating the case after three people including a techie committed suicide after alleged harassment by online lenders. The investigation showed that the said companies were involved in the racket and made profit of around ₹21,000 crore through 1.4 crore financial transactions, NDTV said.

Most of the transactions were reportedly made through payment gateways and bank accounts of these companies while international transactions were made through bit coins.

The scam which ran across the country was operational through call centres based in Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Bengaluru.

Police so far have arrested 18 people in the case.

Investigations have also revealed the role of another Chinese national – Yuan Yuan alias Sissi alias Jennifer in the scam.