Loan app scam: Digital lending firms were cheating own employees

The investigation of the arrested accused in the loan app scam have revealed that several employees of the digital lending companies, which were floated by Chinese nationals, were also lured to float shell companies in the lure of earning more money. The Chinese kingpins of the loan app racket, through which thousands of Indians were harassed, were encouraging employees to create more companies to get a monthly income running into lakhs. Several employees fell prey to this "offer" and formed companies using their personal details.

Mumbai Police's Special Investigation Team (SIT) has busted a racket that was active in extorting money from Indian nationals and taking it to out of India. During investigations, cops also found that one of the masterminds, Liang Chi Sheng, was active in floating shell companies in the country in order to have many bank accounts to circulate and siphon off money. According to the probe, Sheng has floated over 200 shell companies. He was paid about Rs 3.5 lakhs to form each one of them.

Also Read: Loan app scam: How the Chinese spread tentacles around India

"The masterminds didn't want to rely on Sheng completely, so [they] lured employees to form companies among themselves to get monthly incentives," said an officer privy to investigation. "There was a fixed percentage for incentive on the basis of money circulated from their accounts. This led to more employees agreeing [to this scheme]," added the officer.

Following the analysis of over 350 bank accounts, it was established that approximately Rs 30 crore rupees was siphoned off from hundreds of accounts on a daily basis. "Even if you consider 1 to 5 per cent as an incentive, you can calculate how much money was earned by the shell company owners every month," said another officer. "We are checking the personal accounts of these persons as well to know how much money has been diverted to their accounts," he added.