Andra Pradesh police entrap, arrest three foreign loan app scamsters in Chennai airport

Three foreign nationals were arrested in Chennai airport for luring people from Andhra Pradesh with app-based loans and later blackmailing them by extorting large sums of money, police said on Wednesday.

Andhra Pradesh police managed to lure the Malaysia-based scamsters who operate with agents in India to Chennai airport and arrested Yong Lui Xing, Choo Kai Lun and Thiagarajan Kasi. Xing and Luna are of Chinese origin while Kasi is of Indian origin, police said.

Disguised as agents, police interacted with the trio for about 20 days and attracted them to India.

"These loan app scamsters offer a loan of Rs 5,000 but extract Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 in return. While installing the app, they take complete access of your smartphone, including contacts, pictures and others to blackmail later," East Godavari Superintendent of Police Ch Sudheer Kumar Reddy told PTI.

According to Reddy, a man from Kadiyam village died by suicide recently, unable to bear their harassment as they threatened to send across his morphed picture to his contacts and post it on social media.

Incidentally, the arrested foreginers were making transactions worth more than Rs 1 crore per day and about Rs 50 crore a month, enabled by local bank accounts facilitated by their Indian accomplices. Money made through these activities is converted into cryptocurrency and transferred overseas among other routes.

Police froze several bank accounts as part of their investigation.

The three men were booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 306 (Abetment of suicide), 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 509, 386 and 34 along with Section 67 (Punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of Information Technology Act, while the police have also arrested a local agent.

The East Godavari SP pointed out that these men were cheating people from nine countries, including Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Thailand, observing that they also deploy gaming apps for these purposes.