Delhi Police bust extortion racket providing user databases to servers based in China, Hong Kong

New Delhi [India] August 20 (ANI): Delhi Police's special unit Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) on Saturday busted an alleged extortion racket involved in providing user databases to servers based in China and Hong Kong, informed a Delhi Police official.
According to the Delhi Police, IFSO carried out an extensive technical analysis that helped them crack the alleged case of Chinese applications involved in the loan and extortion racket. It was found that all the apps were seeking malicious permissions from the user and after obtaining the access permissions, the contacts, chats, messages and images of the user were uploaded to the servers based in China and Hong Kong.
The analysis of the money route also revealed that the money is being routed to China through Hawala and Cryptocurrencies.
Further, these more than 100 apps were being hosted from AWS servers and Ali Baba servers, which were hosted in India but do not comply with American Companies, informed the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) KPS Malhotra.
IFSO carried out two months of operations after which several raids were conducted in Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Police arrested 22 accused in the case including six Chinese nationals namely Lynda, Akira, Zoya, Kobe Bryant, Luo Rong and Zixia Zhang.
In the raids, police recovered 9 laptops, 25 Hard disks, 51 mobile phones, and 19 debit cards.
DCP also informed that after the crackdown on recovery agents, a new trend of shifting call centres to Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh was noticed.
Earlier, Delhi Police's cyber cell received many complaints related to the extortion of money from the people who were involved in sanctioning instant loans using mobile phone applications. Victims also complained about extorting money using the morphed nude pictures.
IFSO took cognizance of the same and started analysing the complaints at their Cyber Cell, during the analysis of the complaints, it was found that more than 100 such apps are involved in the loan and extortion racket, and collected money was routed to China through Hawala and Cryptocurrencies as IP address of the money was traced to be in China.
Police listed the names of the mobile phone applications involved in the case and they are; Raise cash app, PP money app, Rupees master app, Cash ray app, Mobipocket app
Papa money app, Infinity cash app, Kredit mango app, Kredit marvel app, CB loan app, Cash advance app, HDB loan app, Cash tree app, RAw loan app, Minute cash app, Cash light app, Cash fish app, HD credit app, Rupees land app, Cash room app, Rupee loan app and Well Kredit app.
There were 18 Chinese Instant Loan Apps Linked to the Lucknow-based extortion call centre; Rupee Way, Loan Cube, Wow Rupee, Smart Wallet, Giant Wallet, Hi Rupee, Swift Rupee, Walle twin, Fish club, Yeah cash, Im Loan, Grow tree, Magic Balance, Yocash, Fortune Tree, Super coin and Red Magic.
Meanwhile, police also recovered the operating system of the extortion racket, police revealed that they targeted the citizens who were in dire need of a small loan ranging from Rs 5,000 to 10,000 are being forced to pay even in Lakhs. Many incidents of citizens committing suicide were even reported from other parts of the country, informed the DCP Malhotra.
A dedicated team under the supervision of ACP Raman Lamba, Sunil Kumar, Manoj Kumar and Manish Jorwal comprising of Inspector Avdhesh, Arun Tyagi, SI Manjeet, Sushil and Sunil was constituted. (ANI)