14 held for cheating US, UK nationals in fake loan racket

Fourteen persons were today arrested from the city for allegedly cheating thousands of US and UK nationals under the guise of running loan processing centres, police said.
Accused Abdul Parvez, Basith Ali and others were running fake loan processing/call centres in different parts of the city and luring US and UK nationals with false promises that they were providing personal loan to the needy as required by calling them directly over phone in American accent using the technology from 7.30 PM to 5 AM daily, police said.
Parvez and Basith were nabbed during vehicle checking yesterday at Rein Bazar and based on their interrogation remaining 12 other accused were apprehended, a release from Hyderabad Police said.

The accused used to set up office and recruited employees with good English speaking skills and also trained them for a period of 15 days on accent, US/UK time zones, about script and voice of the processes. The recruited people were also provided English names, according to police.
"The accused used to get the data of US/UK loan customers consisting of name, e-mail ID, address, social security number, bank account number, etc in 40-column information of one customer, which is called one LEAD from one absconding Ishan, a resident of Bhavnagar in Gujarat, who is considered to be the kingpin of this illegitimate business," police said.

The organisers created separate US and UK accounts by creating e-mail Ids and purchased the US and UK-based landline phone number using the address particulars of the US and UK customers data.
"After this the accused used to call to the US/UK customers over phone directly. If the customer is convinced, the caller will ask the customer to pay one month advance monthly repayment of the sanctioned loan amount using different online payment methods/cards," the release said.
After receiving the one month advance monthly repayment amount from the customers, the latter's phone numbers would be blocked. This way, the accused cheated thousands of persons of US and UK.