Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Crime Branch has frozen bank accounts of Mumbai-based Mahagram Payments Pvt Ltd over complaints of fraud through loan apps.
Reportedly, four bank accounts of the payments app having Rs 6.57 crore have been seized. The apps were not registered as non-banking financial companies (NBFC).
Notably, the agency registered a case on April 21 in this connection after getting complaints from the Reserve Bank of India and several persons.
During the investigation, it has been revealed that over 1.5 lakh people, including many from Odisha, had downloaded two illegal loan apps such as Koko and Jojo.
It has been learnt that the apps offered small loan amounts ranging from Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 to its customers’ bank accounts through the link or through UPI to the customers’ Bank accounts.
Once the amount is credited to the customer’s Bank account, within a week the customer is asked to repay the amount along with an excessive rate of interest. Following this, the customer was humiliated on refusing the payment.
The accused company through its recovery agents placed Whatsapp and live calls to the victims humiliating/ abusing them with foul language to return the money with up to 5 times the rate of interest within a week.
Ms Kalinga