K'taka: Fraud Loan App Circulates Morphed Pics Of Mother & Daughter

A 36-year-old Bengaluru woman found her morphed pictures being circulated to her contacts after a few agents running a fraud loan app resorted to this crime. They not just morphed the woman's pictures but also her daughter's.

The police after registering the case confirmed that such fraudsters utilise Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to make various calls that mask their Internet Protocol (IP) address which hides their location of operating such frauds and crimes and also shows the locations of such calls from various countries. 

Fraud Loan App Circulates Morphed Pictures

The woman is a resident of Wison Garden in Bengaluru and is an employee of a private firm. On February 7, she installed a loan application on her phone called AMC Credit Park through a third-party link as the app is not available either on the Play Store or Apple Store.

The woman claimed she received more than about 7000 rupees through multiple transactions in her Citibank account without submitting a loan request. The woman informed the police about the credited 2400 rupees thrice in her bank account.  

She was perplexed about receiving the money despite not registering for any loan requests when she soon began receiving calls from unknown numbers claiming to be the agents of the loan app harassing her to repay the money she received. She claimed that she got around ten calls that even showed the country codes of different countries such as the USA, Bangladesh, Indonesia, etc. 

Police informed the reporting publication that the origins of the scam callers might be different as operators of such fraudulent apps use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to make various calls that mask their Internet Protocol (IP) address which hides their location of operating such frauds and crimes that displays their contact details of varied countries. 

The police revealed that the woman unknowingly granted permission to the app to access all her pictures on the phone and that's how the fraudsters were able to get their hands on the pictures to morph them to blackmail her. 

To the woman's horror, the loan sharks not only blackmailed her to disperse the obscene photographs but also used her daughter's pictures to extract money from her. She claimed that some of her contacts even received their doctored photographs following which she decided to register a police complaint. 

The Bengaluru police have lodged a case in the Central Cyber Economic and Narcotics Crime (CEN) police station under section 66D (Punishment for cheating or transmitting using computer resources), 67 (transmitting and publishing obscene material in electronic form) of the IT Act. 

The Bengaluru Police have said further investigation in the case is underway and urged the citizens to not engage in downloading and lending money through unauthorised service providers warning people of fraud loan apps.