Hyderabad: Beware of frauds offering loans

Hyderabad: As never-say-die international crooks disguised as bankers whose ‘rich old clients’ have left behind unclaimed fortunes, pound our inboxes with unbeatable offers, Indian crooks are developing new methods of cheating the ignorant. Instead of an impersonal email, they zero in on a prospective victim and speak in either Hindi or English and offer them loans at ridiculously low rates. Judging by the number of people falling prey to these goons, it is quite apparent that the execution of their devious plans are nearly foolproof.  

Cyber Crime police officials say that they choose the profile of victims carefully, taking contact details of victims illegally from various financial firms. They call up the victims and promise a huge low interest loan. Once victims believe it is genuine, they ask them to pay several small amounts of money totaling to a large sum, towards various charges.

Police say the goons are trained to convince even the educated. Hyderabad police had earlier arrested suspects from Delhi, many of whom had worked for several years in various call centers before turning to crime. As call centre employees, their main task was to call up customers and convince them to take insurance policies, loans and other services.

“They were trained to tell cock and bull stories in a very convincing way. They offer very less interest compared to the market rate and offer them huge loans”, says Cyber Crime Inspector P. Ravi Kiran, who had interrogated the arrested suspects multiple times during the probe.

The crooks are also well aware of the weakness of their targets. They usually call up loan defaulters, who have been frantically searching for more loans.

The Indian tricksters also attempt the lottery and prize scam. They call up victims who had purchased books, clothes or any other goods from online stores, and tell them that they have won a prize or a lottery of a huge sum after their purchase from the specific site. In order to convince the victims, these crooks call them up multiple times pretending to be different officials from the same firm. Once the victim is convinced, they ask them to pay registration charges, tax, processing fee etc. Again details of their purchases are got from the banks through which the payments for such purchases are made, said an official from Cyberabad Cyber Crime Police.