A young HR executive was snared in a web of financial deception after she downloaded an immediate credit offer that came to her as a message on her phone, in a terrible example of desperation making people dumb. She was forced to download 25 loan applications on her phone over the course of five months after falling prey to the link that was sent to her, claiming she owed them Rs 50,000 when all she had in her hand was Rs 1,700.
Roma Pachigorla, a 25-year-old employee at Kharadi's World Trade Centre, has finally addressed cyber-crime police and filed a complaint against the operators of the various applications that allegedly provided her with false loans.
According to the FIR, Pachigorla needed Rs 70,000 for her father's medical treatment in August, during the height of the lockdown. She was in such a bind that she responded to one of the messages offering an emergency loan. She was then directed to the Google PlayStore to download an app called Palm Cash. She went along with it. She also gave the app permission to access her cellphone data in order to install it. She gave her bank data with the app in exchange for an OTP on her phone.
The lady was granted a princely sum of Rs 3,000 on her application, of which only Rs 1,700 was credited to her and the rest was held back as processing cost, GST, and application fee. She was then given seven days to repay the Rs 3,000 loan. When she was unable to settle the debt, she was intimidated and subjected to extreme mental anguish before being directed to yet another app that would make the payment on her behalf.
The incident repeated again a few days later, and she was pressured to download yet another app, which quickly became regular protocol. She'd downloaded 25 apps on her phone by December, and it was stated that she'd been sanctioned Rs 42,500 in total, plus interest, and that she needed to repay Rs 50,000. "While the apps claimed to have loaned her this substantial sum, she only received the minimum amount at the outset and no more," said Mahadev Kumbhar, police inspector at Shivajinagar's cyber-crime police station.
"The accused's deception is that they transmit an instant loan link to mobile phone numbers. When someone clicks on the link, they are directed to a website where they can download an app. Following that, clients are granted a tiny fraction of the sanctioned loan, with a significant percentage of the money being kept back for taxes and processing fees. If a person is unable to repay in the time allotted, they would persuade the victim to download more applications and take out further loans to pay off the initial one. They gain access to the victim's mobile data through this process, obtaining his or her personal information, which is then used to frighten the person into submission," Kumbhar explained.
Pachigorla was also threatened with having her personal information made public on social media. Under sections 420 (cheating), 500 (defamation), 504 (intentional insult), 507 (criminal intimidation through anonymous communication), and 34 (common intent) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), as well as relevant sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000, a case has been filed against the owners of the apps.
Conclusion
Also, make sure you're getting the lowest interest rate possible from all of the lenders in the market. Again, make certain that you require an immediate financing. Instant loans can be helpful in a need, but they can also be a burden if used for unjustifiable reasons.