{"id":35718,"date":"2023-10-13T20:56:43","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T20:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/the-loan-app-that-threatens-to-reveal-your-nudes-if-you-dont-pay"},"modified":"2023-10-13T21:09:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T21:09:52","slug":"the-loan-app-that-threatens-to-reveal-your-nudes-if-you-dont-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/the-loan-app-that-threatens-to-reveal-your-nudes-if-you-dont-pay","title":{"rendered":"The loan app that threatens to reveal your nudes if you don\u2019t pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mauritius. <\/strong><\/span>A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At least 60 Indians have killed themselves after being abused and threatened.<\/p>\n

A\u200b BBC<\/b> undercover investigation has exposed those profiting from this deadly scam in India and China. Astha Sinhaa woke up to her aunt\u2019s panicked voice on the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t let your mother leave the house.<\/p>\n

\u201d Half-asleep, the 17-year-old was terrified to find her mum Bhoomi Sinhaa in the next room, sobbing and frantic.<\/p>\n

Here was her funny and fearless mother, a respected Mumbai-based property lawyer, a widow raising her daughter alone, reduced to a frenzied mess. \u201cShe was breaking apart,\u201d Astha says.<\/p>\n

A panicked Bhoomi started telling her where all the important documents and contacts were, and seemed desperate to get out of the door. Astha knew she had to stop her.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t let her out of your sight,\u201d her aunt had told her.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause she will end her life.<\/p>\n

\u201d Astha was terrified to find her mother Bhoomi so distressed<\/p>\n

Astha knew her mother had been getting some weird calls and that she owed somebody money, but she had no idea that Bhoomi was reeling from months of harassment and psychological torture.<\/p>\n

She had fallen victim to a global scam with tentacles in at least 14 countries that uses shame and blackmail to make a profit \u2013 destroying lives in the process.<\/p>\n

The business model is brutal but simple. There are many apps that promise hassle-free loans in minutes. Not all of them are predatory. But many \u2013 once downloaded \u2013 harvest your contacts, photos and ID cards, and use that information later to extort you.<\/p>\n

When customers don\u2019t repay on time \u2013 and sometimes even when they do \u2013 they share this information with a call centre where young agents of the gig economy, armed with laptops and phones are trained to harass and humiliate people into repayment.<\/p>\n

Bhoomi Sinhaa At the end of 2021, Bhoomi had borrowed about 47,000 rupees ($565; \u00a3463) from several loan apps while she waited for some work expenses to come through.<\/p>\n

The money arrived almost immediately but with a big chunk deducted in charges. Seven days later she was due to repay but her expenses still hadn\u2019t been paid, so she borrowed from another app and then another.<\/p>\n

The debt and interest spiralled until she owed about two million rupees ($24,000; \u00a319,655). Soon the recovery agents started calling. They quickly turned nasty, slamming Bhoomi with insults and abuse.<\/p>\n

Even when she had paid, they claimed she was lying. They called up to 200 times a day. They knew where she lived, they said, and sent her pictures of a dead body as a warning.<\/p>\n

As the abuse escalated they threatened to message all of the 486 contacts in her phone telling them she was a thief and a whore. When they threatened to tarnish her daughter\u2019s reputation too, Bhoomi could no longer sleep.<\/p>\n

She borrowed from friends, family and more and more apps \u2013 69 in total. At night, she prayed the morning would never come. But without fail at 07:00, her phone would start pinging and buzzing incessantly.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Bhoomi had managed to pay back all of the money, but one app in particular \u2013 Asan Loan \u2013 wouldn\u2019t stop calling. Exhausted, she couldn\u2019t concentrate at work and started having panic attacks.<\/p>\n

One day a colleague called her over to his desk and showed her something on his phone \u2013 a naked, pornographic picture of her. The photo had been crudely photoshopped, Bhoomi\u2019s head stuck on someone else\u2019s body, but it filled her with disgust and shame.<\/p>\n

She collapsed by her colleague\u2019s desk. It had been sent by Asan Loan to every contact in her phone book. That was when Bhoomi thought of killing herself.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen evidence of scams like this run by various companies all over the world. But in India alone, the BBC has found at least 60 people have killed themselves after being harassed by loan apps.<\/p>\n

Most were in their 20s and 30s \u2013 a fireman, an award-winning musician, a young mum and dad leaving behind their three- and five-year-old daughters, a grandfather and grandson who got involved in loan apps together.<\/p>\n

Four were just teenagers. Most victims are too ashamed to speak about the scam, and the perpetrators have remained, for the most part, anonymous and invisible.<\/p>\n

After looking for an insider for months, the BBC managed to track down a young man who had worked as a debt recovery agent for call centres working for multiple loan apps.<\/p>\n

After working as a debt recovery agent \u201cRohan\u201d agreed to expose the abuse Rohan \u2013 not his real name \u2013 told us he had been troubled by the abuse he had witnessed.<\/p>\n

Many customers cried, some threatened to kill themselves, he said. \u201cIt would haunt me all night. \u201d He agreed to help the BBC expose the scam. He applied for a job in two different call centres \u2013 Majesty Legal Services and Callflex Corporation \u2013 and spent weeks filming undercover.<\/p>\n

His videos captured young agents harassing clients. \u201cBehave or I will smash you,\u201d one woman says, swearing. She accuses the customer of incest and, when he hangs up, she starts laughing.<\/p>\n

Another suggests the client should prostitute his mother to repay the loan. Rohan recorded over 100 incidents of harassment and abuse, capturing this systematic extortion on camera for the first time.<\/p>\n

The worst abuse he witnessed took place at Callflex Corporation, just outside Delhi. Here, agents routinely used obscene language to humiliate and threaten customers.<\/p>\n

These were not rogue agents going off-script \u2013 they were supervised and directed by managers at the call centre, including one called Vishal Chaurasia.<\/p>\n

Rohan gained Chaurasia\u2019s trust, and together with a journalist posing as an investor, arranged a meeting at which they asked him to explain exactly how the scam works.<\/p>\n

Unaware he was being filmed, Vishal Chaurasia described how he would \u201ctorture\u201d clients to repay When a customer takes out a loan, he explained, they give the app access to the contacts on their phone.<\/p>\n

Callflex Corporation is hired to recover the money \u2013 and if the customer misses a payment the company starts hassling them, and then their contacts. His staff can say anything, Chaurasia told them, as long as they get a repayment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe customer then pays because of the shame,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll find at least one person in his contact list who can destroy his life.<\/p>\n

\u201d We approached Chaurasia directly but he did not want to comment. Callflex Corporation did not respond to our efforts to contact them. One of the many lives destroyed was Kirni Mounika\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old civil servant was the brains of her family, the only student at her school to get a government job, a doting sister to her three brothers.<\/p>\n

Her father, a successful farmer, was ready to support her to do a masters in Australia. The Monday she took her own life, three years ago, she had hopped on her scooter to go to work as usual.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was all smiles,\u201d her father, Kirni Bhoopani, says. It was only when police reviewed Mounika\u2019s phone and bank statements that they found out she had borrowed from 55 different loan apps.<\/p>\n

It started with a loan of 10,000 rupees ($120; \u00a3100) and spiralled to more than 30 times that. By the time she decided to kill herself, she had paid back more than 300,000 rupees ($3,600; \u00a32,960).<\/p>\n

Police say the apps harassed her with calls and vulgar messages \u2013 and had started messaging her contacts. On the day that she died Mounika was due to travel to her best friend\u2019s wedding<\/p>\n

Mounika\u2019s room is now a makeshift shrine. Her government ID card hangs by the door, the bag her mum packed for a wedding still lying there. The thing that upsets her father the most is that she hadn\u2019t told him what was going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have easily arranged the money,\u201d he says, wiping tears from his eyes. He\u2019s furious at the people who did this.<\/p>\n

As he was taking his daughter\u2019s body home from the hospital her phone rang and he answered to an obscenity-laden rant. \u201cThey told us she has to pay,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe told them she was dead.<\/p>\n

\u201d He wondered who these monsters could be. Hari \u2013 not his real name \u2013 worked at a call centre doing recovery for one of the apps Mounika had borrowed from. The pay was good but by the time Mounika died he was already feeling uneasy about what he was part of.<\/p>\n

Although he claims not to have made abusive calls himself \u2013 he says he was in the team that made initial polite calls \u2013 he told us managers instructed staff to abuse and threaten people.<\/p>\n

The agents would send messages to a victim\u2019s contacts, painting the victim as a fraud and a thief. \u201cEveryone has a reputation to maintain in front of their family.<\/p>\n

No-one is going to spoil that reputation for the measly sum of 5,000 rupees,\u201d he says. Once a payment had been made the system would ping \u201cSuccess!\u201d and they would move on to the next client.<\/p>\n

When clients started threatening to take their own lives nobody took it seriously \u2013 then the suicides started happening. The staff called their boss, Parshuram Takve, to ask if they should stop.<\/p>\n

The following day Takve appeared in the office. He was angry. \u201cHe said, \u2018Do what you\u2019re told and make recoveries,\u2019\u201d Hari says. So they did. A few months later, Mounika was dead.<\/p>\n

Takve was ruthless. But he wasn\u2019t running this operation alone. Sometimes, Hari says, the software interface would switch to Chinese without warning. Takve was married to a Chinese woman called Liang Tian Tian.<\/p>\n

Together, they had set up the loan recovery business, Jiyaliang, in Pune, where Hari worked. Image caption, Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve in their police mugshots<\/p>\n

In December 2020, Takve and Liang were arrested by police investigating a case of harassment and released on bail a few months later. In April 2022 they were charged with extortion, intimidation and abetment of suicide.<\/p>\n

By the end of the year they were on the run. We couldn\u2019t track down Takve. But when we investigated the apps Jiyaliang worked for, it led us to a Chinese businessman called Li Xiang.<\/p>\n

He has no online presence, but we found a phone number linked to one of his employees and, posing as investors, set up a meeting with Li. With his face shoved uncomfortably close to the camera, he bragged about his businesses in India.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still operating now, just not letting Indians know we are a Chinese company,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Back in 2021, two of Li\u2019s companies had been raided by Indian police investigating harassment by loan apps. Their bank accounts had been frozen. Image caption, Li Xiang told our undercover reporter about his company\u2019s \u201cspecific detailed procedures\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to understand that because we aim to recover our investment quickly, we certainly don\u2019t pay local taxes, and the interest rates we offer violate local laws,\u201d he says. Li told us his company has its own loan apps in India, Mexico and Colombia.<\/p>\n

He claimed to be an industry leader in risk control and debt collection services in South East Asia, and is now expanding across Latin America and Africa \u2013 with more than 3,000 staff in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India ready to provide \u201cpost-loan services\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then he explained what his company does to recover loans. \u201cIf you don\u2019t repay, we may add you on WhatsApp, and on the third day, we will call and message you on WhatsApp at the same time, and call your contacts.<\/p>\n

Then, on the fourth day, if your contacts don\u2019t pay, we have specific detailed procedures. \u201cWe access his call records and capture a lot of his information.<\/p>\n

Basically, it\u2019s like he\u2019s naked in front of us. \u201d Bhoomi Sinha could handle the harassment, the threats, the abuse and the exhaustion \u2013 but not the shame of being linked to that pornographic image.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat message actually stripped me naked in front of the entire world,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI lost my self-respect, my morality, my dignity, everything in a second.
\nIt was shared with lawyers, architects, government officials, elderly relatives and friends of her parents \u2013 people who would never look at her in the same way again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has tarnished the core of me, like if you join a broken glass, there will still be cracks on it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She has been ostracised by neighbours in the community she has lived in for 40 years. \u201cAs of today, I have no friends. It\u2019s just me I guess,\u201d she says with a sad chuckle.<\/p>\n

Some of her family still don\u2019t speak to her. And she constantly wonders whether the men she works with are picturing her naked. The morning that her daughter Astha found her she was at her lowest ebb.<\/p>\n

But it was also the moment she decided to fight back. \u201cI don\u2019t want to die like this,\u201d she decided. IMAGE SOURCE, PRARTHNA SINGH\/BBCImage caption, Bhoomi says her daughter Astha\u2019s support saved her life<\/p>\n

She filed a police report but has heard nothing since. All she could do was change her number and get rid of her sim card \u2013 and when Astha started receiving calls her daughter destroyed hers too.<\/p>\n

She told friends, family and colleagues to ignore the calls and messages and, eventually, they all but stopped. Bhoomi found support in her sisters, her boss and an online community of others abused by loan apps.<\/p>\n

But mostly, she found strength in her daughter. \u201cI must have done something good to be given a daughter like this,\u201d she says. \u201cIf she hadn\u2019t stood by me then I would have been one of the many people who\u2019ve killed themselves because of loan apps.<\/p>\n

\u201d We put the allegations in this report to Asan Loan \u2013 and also, through contacts, to Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, who are in hiding. Neither the company nor the couple responded.<\/p>\n

When asked for comment, Li Xiang told the BBC that he and his companies comply with all local laws and regulations, have never run predatory loan apps, have ceased collaboration with Jiyaliang, the loan recovery company run by Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, and do not collect or use customers\u2019 contact information.<\/p>\n

He said his loan recovery call centres adhere to strict standards and he denied profiting from the suffering of ordinary Indians. Majesty Legal Services deny using customers\u2019 contacts to recover loans. They told us their agents are instructed to avoid abusive or threatening calls, and any violation of the company\u2019s policies results in dismissal.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Mauritius<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mauritius. A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At least 60 Indians have killed themselves after being abused and threatened. A\u200b BBC undercover investigation has exposed those profiting from this deadly scam in India and China. 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