Loan app harassers trained by handlers sitting in Nepal: Mumbai Crime Branch

The investigation so far into the Kurar suicide case shows that the recovery agents in India are trained to harass borrowers by their handlers in Nepal officers of the Mumbai Crime Branchrsquos Cyber Cell said on Thursday Police arrested Raju Bhanwarlal Khadaw last week after his harassment drove a Kurar resident to suicide While he has not revealed much about his handlers police are using the data recovered from his phone for further probeThe North Region Cyber Cell of the Mumbai Crime Branch is investigating the suicide of Sandeep Koregaonkar a resident of Kurar in Malad The officers arrested Khadaw from Gajsinghpura in Jaipur Rajasthan on May 29 and also found R14 lakh in his bank account which they believe is his income from harassing the borrowersTough nut to crackKhadaw is not revealing much about his handlers in Nepal said an officer adding ldquoHe is a tough nut to crack He is aware of legal proceedingsrdquo The Cyber Cell however is in the process of taking Interpolrsquos help in getting further details on suspects operating out of NepalHe masked himselfPolice traced Khadaw using the Internet Protocol Detail Record IPDR and learnt that he used four different mobile phones and four SIM cards He had masked his identity by using Virtual Private Networking VPN ldquoHe was using one mobile phone for the Internet and the phones that he used to make calls were connected to the Internet through hotspot He is tech savvy and knows that VPN makes it a little difficult for the law enforcement agency to trace the sourcerdquo an officer privy to the investigation saidKhadaw and others would sit under a tree for hours daily making calls and sending messages Representation picTraining to harassKhadaw also used the SIM card of one of his family members and downloaded WhatsApp on his mobile phone to make harassment calls officers said According to sources on an average Khadaw made about 100 calls daily to harass the borrowers of HelloCash loan appThe handlers trained him to make calls for recovery of loans said officers ldquoThe calls were made through WhatsApp He had deleted all the call logs One of the phone numbers found on him was used to make calls to Koregaonkarrdquo they addedSalary for harassingHe was paid a handsome salary transferred through different bank accounts and UPI IDs ldquoWe have found over R14 lakh in his account which is fraudulent in nature He belongs to a middle class family He does not even have an explanation about the huge amount of money found in his accountrdquo an officer saidHandlers in NepalldquoApart from him we have got the details of two more suspects through technical analysis They are operating from Nepal and we are in the process of taking Interpolrsquos help through the CBI which is the nodal agencyrdquo the officer said Khadaw is in the Cyber Cellrsquos custody until today Friday The police are going to seek his further custody to ascertain more about the handlers and their modus operandiKhadaw who has a BA degree and is a teacher by profession lives with his parents and wife who were not aware of his crime said officers Police arrested him after Koregaonkar took his life following constant harassment by him Khadaw had shared on WhatsApp morphed photos with message saying Koregaonkar has raped and killed a 12yearold girlJamtara modus operandiOther officers midday spoke to said that the loan app racket uses the same modus operandi that was used by Jamtara phishing scamsters Police suspect the involvement of several agents mostly unemployed since the first COVID19 lockdown in March 2020ldquoIn Gajsinghpura from where we nabbed Khadaw we spoke to the locals They told us that Khadaw and threefour of his friends would gather under a tree daily after 9 am and they stayed glued to their mobile phones until 67 pm The youngsters told villagers they were playing Dream 11 betting games and winning lakhs of rupeesldquoThey were instead sending threatening messages as per the details gathered from Khadawrsquos mobile phone We only have evidence against Khadaw We are investigating to verify if his friends were also involvedrdquo said an officerldquoWe believe that Khadaw was active in the loan app scam since the first lockdownrdquo Talking about his bank details the officer said ldquoKhadaw sent money to two other people in Odisha and Pune By the time our teams went to these two locations the accused had fled They were staying at hotels and had used forged documentsrdquoldquoWe believe there are several recovery agents across India who did a recce during the lockdown and selected more jobless people for the scam and Khadaw was hired by one of them We found out that Khadaw was sacked from the school where he was working as a sports teacherrdquo the officer saidWhat is the Jamtara scamIn one of the most common cyber frauds youths from Jamtara in Jharkhand called people asking for KYC details or bank account updates and in the process duping them These callers also secured remote access to their victimsrsquo mobile phones by asking them to download an app and looted them of thousands of rupeesRs 14Lthe amount found in Khadawrsquos account100No of calls Khadaw made daily