Noida Police cyber cell and have arrested 12 persons linked to a Chinese lending app through which they duped several people and harassed them. The accused, using the app, lent small amounts of Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 to people and then, would threaten to share their objectionable morphed images, pressuring them into repaying 10 to 20 times the loan amount. Police recovered 36 desktop computers, 15 laptops, eight smartphones, two dialers, 135 SIM cards, 10 headphones, and Rs 1.5 lakh in cash from their possession.
The arrested accused have been identified as Punit Tuli, Mohd Afzal, Jitendra, Neeraj Lal, Shivam, Azeem, Aakash Srivastava, Sumit, Arun Singh, Siddharth Ojha, Rajneesh Jha, Bharat.
They used to hack the mobile phones of people who take loans using the app and take out their contact lists, photos, and videos. Later, these accused used to threaten victims with morphed photos and videos in a bid to extort money from them. They even set up a call center in Sector 63 for the purpose.