India's Home Ministry cracks down on predatory lending apps following suicides India's Home Ministry has asked state governments to crack down on illegal lending apps it says have led to "multiple suicides by citizens owing to harassment, blackmail, and harsh recovery methods." A letter sent last week states: "Large numbers of complaints have been reported across India pertaining to illegal digital …
The police should set up a mass production counter fraud with cellphones filled with computer generated photos and fake ID's, and borrow as much as possible. Tell them you can pay them if they send someone in person to a some meeting place, then place that representative under arrest.
By the way, if they are communicating in Indian dialects they must be getting Indian help.
It would be interesting to know if these are the notorious Chinese crime gangs that have been operating out of Myanmar (Burma) and Cambodia which have also been in the news recently.
These crime gangs have been running rampant across China, Hong Kong, and much of the rest of east and southeast Asia with telephone scams, cryptocurrency scams, and pretty much everything else that can be done remotely. They get workers from all across Asia (including India) by promising them well paid jobs in legitimate businesses and then holding them prisoner until they make enough money from scams to pay back a specified "debt".
Most of them seem to operate from free trade zones in Myanmar, with Cambodia being another major location, but they also have offices in places such as Dubai.
The Chinese government have been trying to get to grips with them by telling expats in certain countries to return home and provide evidence that they are engaged in legitimate business. If they refuse then their property in China will be seized and life will be made difficult for their families (e.g. cut off from government benefits). They seem to congregate in countries which don't extradite to China (either because of no treaty or because the legal system doesn't work).
The main problem seems to be that in Myanmar at least the crime gangs seem to operate under the protection of the Myanmar military who get a cut of the action. The main operating location is in a free trade zone across the border from China. I think the free trade zones (which also have legitimate businesses) get Internet connectivity via China and so have access to Chinese IT hosting services and the like through various cut-outs and fronts.
I don't know if the connection is there, but it occurs to me that it may not be a coincidence that the problems mentioned in India are occurring at the same time as the other problems across east and south Asia. I suspect that countries across Asia may need to cooperate to squash this problem or else it will just move around from legal haven to legal haven if countries act individually to try to squash individual manifestations of it.
It's no great secret that India doesn't get along with China - and I'm pretty sure India will throw any number of negative things happening as being the fault of China - however the number of scam calls I get on my phone offering me cheap electricity, Microsoft support and Amazon refunds (all scams) - that are from India is quite amazing.
The Indian police don't seem to do anything about this
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