BENGALURU, 2 JAN

In a joint operation, Salar News and Bengaluru CEN police exposed a fake loan scam that preyed on unsuspecting victims by using dummy apps to siphon money and harass them with threats.

To uncover the scam, a Salar News reporter downloaded and analysed a loan app. The reporter ran the app on an emulator and found it to be a poorly designed dummy application. Upon initiating a loan request, the app required a valid phone number and personal documents. Despite the app’s glitches, the reporter was in for a shock the next day when Rs 2,100 was credited to the phone number provided during the application. A quick investigation revealed that the money had been transferred from an account under the name Chavan Aluminium and Farnichar Kich.

A week later, the reporter received a threat message demanding Rs 3,500 as loan repayment. The situation escalated when a woman claiming to be from the RupeKing loan recovery team called, threatening to leak the reporter's personal documents to their contact lists unless the repayment was made.

The reporter requested a payment link from the recovery agent, who provided a gateway link. Instead of repaying, the reporter shared a spoofed location tracker disguised as proof of payment. The data from the spoofed link was handed over to Cyber Economics and Narcotics (CEN) Halasuru Gate police.

Police revealed that the scammers operated using proxy servers, which immediately disconnected when their network was accessed. Subsequently, the phone numbers used by the scammers were deactivated, though efforts to track them are ongoing. -Salar News