Four held for duping 4,000 people of 4 crore with ‘ PM’ loan apps

The accused made nine apps and three web portals bearing the PM's name

The city Crime Branch has busted a gang of four for allegedly duping people with loan applications bearing the Prime Minister’s name. The accused used to lure people into a trap by offering them easy loan and dupe them by making them to pay for various charges. The accused have made nine such applications and have allegedly duped around 4000 people to the tune of Rs 4 crore, said police.

According to the police officials, their applications mostly bear PM in their name such as PM Bharat Loan Yojana, PM Loan Yojana, Pradhanmantri Mudra Yojana and so on. Along with that, they also created three web portals bearing the Prime Minister's name. Through these apps the accused offered easy loan and asked victims for registration and submission of their documents.

Following the registration the accused send them a link and ask them to pay for various charges and continued to demand money until the victim stopped paying further, said police. Many people did not complaint as the fraud amount was less.

"During the course of investigation it has been revealed that the apps have been downloaded by 2.8 lakh people of which many have submitted their documents. We are also worried for people's documents as their misuse could not be ruled out and we urged people to refrain from sending their documents and paying to such apps without due verification," said Milind Bharambe, joint commissioner of Mumbai crime branch.

"While analysing social media for such activities we found many such apps indulged in duping people. With the help of technical analysis we traced them and raided their call centres in Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh and in Jaipur and arrested the four accused, said Rashmi Karandikar, DCP cyber.