When Hemanth and his friend Chiranjeevi approached the police earlier with a cheating complaint against a company that had recently hired them, little did they know that they would become part of a massive mobile loan app scam with alleged links to Chinese nationals.
The two men, both in their early 30s, had put up their CVs on job recruitment sites earlier this year, and were surprised when an HR manager reached out to them with a deal that seemed too good to be true. They were offered ‘director’ posts and an assured salary with little else to do. All that was required of them was to submit their personal documents, including their Aadhaar and PAN cards. They didn’t even have to report to an office.
However, after two months of not receiving even a single rupee from their employer, the duo approached the police in November. The Central Crime Branch (CCB) police, which took charge of the case, unearthed a network of 52 companies that were allegedly fleecing customers by offering loans with high interest rates and processing fees via apps. At the helm of this network was Licorise Technology Pvt. Ltd., a firm in Munnekolala, Marathahalli, that was allegedly employing out-of-work BPO employees as loan recovery agents.
The firm was allegedly operating at many levels: offering short-term loans on various mobile applications like Cash Master and Crazy Rupees; hiring former BPO employees to work as recovery agents, and setting up benami companies in the names of…
