24-year-old Uttarakhand woman and Bengaluru-based man emerge masterminds

A 24yearold Uttarakhand woman and a Bengalurubased man have emerged as masterminds of the loan app racket that worked like a corporate snared thousands and extorted crores from them according to a special investigation team set up by the Mumbai police The police said Priyanshi Kandpal and Liang Chi Sheng worked for their Chinese mastersThey sent money to them through over 200 shell companies and cryptocurrencies The special investigation team SIT led by Joint Commissioner Crime Suhas Warke Additional Commissioner Veeresh Prabhu and DCP Cyber Hemrajsingh Rajput has so far arrested 14 peopleThe police said Priyanshi a finance graduate joined the business at 20 when she had gone to China for further studies ldquoHaving an advantage of speaking and writing Chinese Priyanshi excelled rapidly and became almost its head for Indiardquo said an officer ldquoBased at Haldwani in Uttarakhand Priyanshi was in constant touch with the Chinese operatives and Indian recruits Between 2018 and 2022 she visited China multiple times She was keeping a close eye on the daily amount disbursed to the victims as loans and the money recovered from themrdquo said the officer ldquoThe money was routed through multiple accounts and sent out of India using cryptosrdquoSuhas Warke joint commissioner crime addresses the media on their investigation into the loan app racket on Friday PicAtul KambleLiang also with a finance background helped their Chinese handlers float hundreds of shell companies and create accounts to siphon off the money ldquoAfter a group of Chinese officials visited India in 2018 the whole racket rolled on it accelerated during the pandemic Some Indian citizens were chosen as leaders and also taken to China for training and skill developmentrdquo said an officer from the SITShengrsquos family tree has Chinese links said a source ldquoShengrsquos grandfather had come to India before Independence and settled in Kolkata while he shifted to Bengaluru recently mostly for working for the racket His work was to form shell companies using local residentsrsquo KYC data and hand over the details to Priyanshirsquos team He has floated more than 200 shell companies till now and used to get Rs 35 lakh for every companyrdquo said an officer80GB data recoveredCops have found 80 GB of data from Shengrsquos hard drive which has pornlike content ldquoIt has video chats with women We suspect it was made by Sheng only But the context of the content is not clear yetrdquo said the officerLookout notices against 2The Mumbai police have issued two look out notices against two Chinese nationals who are suspected to be the head of the whole racket One of them has been identified as Liu Yi and the other one is a woman Both had visited India in 2018 The police have also got hold of CCTV footage from the hotels where the alleged meetings had taken place They might issue more LOCs against Chinese nationals as their real identity is yet to be establishedWelloiled racketThe Chinese handlers were in touch with the masterminds and other team leaders through DingTalk app which enabled users to call chat and share data More than 203 loan apps were floated on Google Play Store while many more were shared through SMS or WhatsApp via links The victims got a portion of the amount they sought The harassment and extortion would begin after 5 to 7 daysDifferent groups of callersThe callers and technical teams formed the backbone of the crime There were four categories of callersmdashone would give information about the app how to upload KYC the second group called to remind borrowers about the deadline the third type of callers would press borrowers to pay as soon as possible at times threatening to make their pictures and videos viral and the last set of callers abused and harassed the borrowers through different numbers Most of the agents worked from homeSyndicatersquos technical teamThe team included people having sound knowledge of the unified payment interface or UPI They would create 3 UPI IDs for every account of a shell company and ask the callers to use them for receiving money from borrowers Each UPI ID was not used for more than 3 days and it would be deactivated by the technical team immediately The gang also had experts who would test the UPI IDs before giving a green signal to the team to share them with the recovery agentsRouting money to ChinaThe finance team would track the money flowing in from borrowers The police have found that the racket generated about Rs 30 crore a day and the money was converted into cryptocurrencies As soon as an account got more than Rs 10 lakh the money would be moved out The racket used crypto wallets to send the extorted amount to ChinalsquoIt was challengingrsquoldquoWe have saved more than Rs 14 crore of the borrowers and are working on more accounts It was a mammoth task to investigate and establish the role of every single person The SIT has worked day and night to unearth an international racket I would urge citizens to come forward and register FIRs if they have been cheated and not to borrow from such online appsrdquo said Suhas Warke joint commissioner crimeRoles and salariesCaller Rs 17000 plus incentiveTeam Leadereach TL had 40 to 45 callers Rs 30 to 35000Most of TLs were made shell company directors and would get commissionsManagers Rs 75000 plus incentiveThe arrested and their rolesPriyanshi Shekharchandra Kandpal 24 Uttarakhand ndash Country headLiang Chi Sheng39 Bengaluru mdash second mastermindOwais Salim Ahmed 29 Bengaluru ndash Team leaderVipul Shankar Gauda 24 Bengaluru ndash Team leaderSneh Samir Somani30 Malad ndash Finance teamSanjay Virbhan Arora28 Gurugram ndash UPI testing tech helpVighnesh Anand 28 Bengaluru ndash Team leader shell company directorMallayya Chikanayya Kuruba 24 Bengaluru Team leader shell company directorAjaykumar Arunkumar 25 Bengaluru ndash Deputy to PriyanshiThese apart 4 callers from Karnataka one from Andhra Pradesh have been arrested