Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha Police has arrested a chartered accountant identified as Neerav Gupta alias Raman, a resident of Huda, Gurgaon on 30.07.2022 from Paschim Vihar, West Police Station Area
Following arrest, the accused was produced before the Court of Metropolitan Magistrate, Tis-Hazari court, New Delhi. Today, the accused was produced before Hon’ble SDJM, Bhubaneswar, after being brought on transit remand.
EOW PS Case No.13 dt.02.07.2022 u/s294/384/420/467/468/471/120-B IPC, r/w Sec.66 (D) IT Act, 2000 was registered on the basis of the report submitted by Smt. Pranati Senapati, Inspector, EOW, who was enquiring into an allegation of Shri Sakti Prasad Dash of Bhubaneswar regarding the harassment/ extortion/ mental torture by the recovery agents of the Digital Loan App “Kredit Gold” by sending the humiliating/abusive/ messages/ morphed photographs etc.
Investigation reveals that, Sakti Prasad Dash, after downloading the loan app “Kredit Gold”, received an instant loan of Rs.9,000 that was credited to his account. However, after 4 days he received WhatsApp messages and calls to pay back Rs.15,627.
Thereafter, he received call and messages from different mobile numbers which were traced to be the number of a company namely M/s Good Start Business Pvt. Ltd., the Director of which is Nitin Malik, earlier forwarded in this case.
Taking the lead from Nitin Mallik, the present accused Neerav Gupta was arrested. It was ascertained that accused Neerav Gupta is a Chartered Accountant. He has opened a good number of shell companies purposefully to be used by the Chinese Nationals to facilitate the cash transaction relating to the digital lending apps.
In return, he was getting huge cash from the Chinese People through Nitin, directly from China and through Alipay QR code.
The following shell companies have been opened by the accused Neerav Gupta:-
- Cramlington Technology Private Limited
- TODDLER Technology Private Limited
- Tax Doller Technology Private Limited
- Knight Angel Technology Private Limited
- Rose Island Technology Private Limited
Besides the above, the accused Neerav Gupta has opened the following OPCs for the use of Chinese National in digital lending:-
- Rohit Smart soft
- Jagdish Smart soft
- Kamlasingh
He has received Rs.30 lacs from the Chinese Nationals for selling the above shell companies to facilitate the business of the loan app. He was also not only registering the shell companies but also arranging the Directors for the companies for a nominal salary. It is suspected that this international gang is running at least 10 such illegal loan Applications.
This is worth mentioning here that there are more than one Lakh downloads of the “Kredit Gold APP’ alone. If we include all the APPs there would be Lakhs of victims across the country including from Odisha.
Many incriminating materials like laptop, two mobiles, 11 seals of the shell companies, 5 digital signature certificate tokens, 4 cheque books of four shell companies and many incriminating chats available in his laptop and phones have been recovered, collected and seized from the accused Neerav Gupta.
The accused is working for the Chinese people having regular contact with them and is responsible for lending/recovery of the loan amount in India. He is also wanted by different Law Enforcement Agencies in India. The investigation is in progress, the EOW said in a press note.
EOW Advisory on Illegal Loan Apps
In order to contain these types of crime and to create general awareness among the public, it is hereby advised/ requested to the public that not to take any loans from unregistered/ illegal loan apps available on Internet and Playstore as the loan apps on pretext of advancing loan, access/ hack all information from the customers phone, which may later be used by the company to perpetrate some other financial crime.
Such loan apps also harass the customer by charging not only a high rate of interest but on failure to repay the same, harass them by sending obscene, morphed porn photographs and indecent representation of the customers to their contact list.
Hence, on failure of repayment of loan, the consequences have to be borne not only by the customer but also by their family members and friends/contacts. Many times money is also credited just after downloading the APP without actually asking/ requesting money.
In some states, many people have committed suicide being blackmailed / continuously humiliated by the recovery agents of these illegal loan APPs. Not only the borrowers but their family members are also harassed. All are advised that one should avoid downloading/ using these illegal loan APPs.
Even if someone has already downloaded/ taken loan, they should not surrender/ tolerate the abusive/ harassing behavior/ torture but instead report the matter to police. And in no case they should take the extreme steps like committing suicide.
Advisory-
- Please do not give your documents for opening of bank accounts to be operated by someone else and also don’t allow anybody to use your SIM to be used by someone else. These things can be used for illegal purposes.
- Please don’t surrender to abusive/ torturous method of recovery agents of these Loan App companies. Report the matter to local Police.
