Inside deadly instant loan app scam blackmailing with nudes
By Story Agencies, October 12, 2023A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
At least 60 Indians have killed themselves after being abused and threatened. A BBC undercover investigation has exposed those profiting from this deadly scam in India and China.
Astha Sinhaa woke up to her aunt’s panicked voice on the phone. “Don’t let your mother leave the house.” Half-asleep, the 17-year-old was terrified to find her mum Bhoomi Sinhaa in the next room, sobbing and frantic.
Here was her funny and fearless mother, a respected Mumbai-based property lawyer, a widow raising her daughter alone, reduced to a frenzied mess.
“She was breaking apart,” Astha says. A panicked Bhoomi started telling her where all the important documents and contacts were, and seemed desperate to get out of the door. dAstha knew her mother had been getting some weird calls and that she owed somebody money, but she had no idea that Bhoomi was reeling from months of harassment and psychological torture.
She had fallen victim to a global scam with tentacles in at least 14 countries that uses shame and blackmail to make a profit – destroying lives in the process.
The business model is brutal but simple.
There are many apps that promise hassle-free loans in minutes. Not all of them are predatory. But many – once downloaded – harvest your contacts, photos and ID cards, and use that information later to extort you.
When customers don’t repay on time – and sometimes even when they do – they share this information with a call centre where young agents of the gig economy, armed with laptops and phones are trained to harass and humiliate people into repayment.
At the end of 2021, Bhoomi had borrowed about 47,000 rupees ($565; £463) from several loan apps while she waited for some work expenses to come through. The money arrived almost immediately but with a big chunk deducted in charges.
Seven days later she was due to repay but her expenses still hadn’t been paid, so she borrowed from another app and then another. The debt and interest spiralled until she owed about two million rupees ($24,000; £19,655).
Soon the recovery agents started calling. They quickly turned nasty, slamming Bhoomi with insults and abuse. Even when she had paid, they claimed she was lying. They called up to 200 times a day. They knew where she lived, they said, and sent her pictures of a dead body as a warning.
As the abuse escalated they threatened to message all of the 486 contacts in her phone telling them she was a thief and a whore. When they threatened to tarnish her daughter’s reputation too, Bhoomi could no longer sleep. She borrowed from friends, family and more and more apps – 69 in total.
At night, she prayed the morning would never come. But without fail at 07:00, her phone would start pinging and buzzing incessantly.