HYDERABAD, India — The harassing calls began soon after sunrise.
Kiran Kumar remained in bed and for hours thought about how he was going to end
his hostage of a life.
اضافة اعلان
The cement salesman had initially borrowed about $40 from a
lender through an online app to supplement his $200-a-month salary. But he
could not pay the mounting fees and interest, so he borrowed from others. By
that morning, Kumar owed roughly $4,000.
Even worse, the lenders had the phone numbers of those closest
to him and were threatening to make his problems public.
“If I am labeled a fraud in front of everyone, my self-respect
is gone, my honor is gone,” Kumar, 28, said in an interview. “What is left?”
Authorities in India are increasingly worried that many more
victims like Kumar may be out there. They believe a new breed of lender, its
technique sharpened in China, has been preying on working-class and rural
people who have been devastated by the impact of the coronavirus on the Indian
economy.
These lenders do not require credit scores or visits to a bank.
But they charge high costs over a brief period. They also require access to a
borrower’s phone, siphoning up contacts, photos, text messages, even battery
percentage.
Then they bombard borrowers and their social circles with pleas,
threats and sometimes fake legal documents threatening dire consequences for
nonpayment. In conservative, tightly knit communities, such loss of honor can
be devastating.
One police investigation alone in the city of Hyderabad, India,
has mapped out about 14 million transactions across the country worth $3
billion over about six months. India’s central bank as well as national
authorities are now investigating.
The investigations are raising alarms in India over the
vulnerability of a population of 1.3 billion still getting accustomed to
digital payments. Online transactions in India will reach more than $3 trillion
by 2025, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the consulting firm.
Further fraud findings could spur the government, which has already limited the
personal data that online companies can use, to take a tighter grip on the
industry.
The apps also speak to the global nature of online fraud. Many
of the companies use techniques that flourished in China two years ago, before
authorities there shut them down, and that have since reappeared elsewhere.
The loan apps emerged at a desperate time. The government
enacted a tough, two-month lockdown a year ago to contain the virus, plunging
India into a deep recession. Millions were thrown out of work. Traditional
forms of lending, like banks and microlenders, were temporarily closed.
With names like Money Now, First Cash, Super Cash and Cool Cash
— according to police documents — the apps came and went on Google’s app store
in India, some reappearing with a slight change of identity. Most were built
with off-the-shelf software that made their creation as easy as starting a
blog, said Srikanth Lakshmanan, one of the coordinators of Cashless Consumers,
a collective of technology volunteers studying the apps.
With a few taps on a phone and a fresh selfie, a borrower could
get the cash needed for a doctor’s appointment, for restocking the kitchen or
for paying a child’s school fees.
Repayment could be due as quickly as a week. Lenders often added
interest and fees amounting to as much as one-third of the loan even before
they sent the money so borrowers would already owe more than received. And to
get money, borrowers had to hand over their personal information.
That was when the call centers went into action, according to
police and analysts. First they would badger borrowers into paying back the
principal, interest and fees. Then they would call friends and family,
sometimes falsely saying the borrower was wanted by police. Some created
WhatsApp groups, added members from the borrower’s contact list, then bombarded
the group with accusations. Some would steer desperate borrowers to other
services that lent money, further ensnaring them.
Police in Hyderabad took notice this past winter after the
suicides and after people lodged harassment complaints. They were stymied until
an informant came forward and, in return for a roughly $150 reward, shared the
address and details of a call center where a close friend worked as a
collection agent.
In an interview with The New York Times, the collection agent —
a fast-talking 24-year-old who made about $130 a month — said each day he would
receive electronic files on about 50 borrowers. The files included their
personal details, copies of their government IDs and their contact lists.
Workers could make a weekly bonus of about $7 if they pressured
three-fourths of the borrowers to pay loans back, said the collection agent,
who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisal from his former employer. The
bonus doubled for a success rate of four-fifths or more. Clients often begged
for time, the agent said, and some even said the constant harassment would lead
to their deaths. The collection agent, eyes on the bonus, would continue
anyway.
So far, the investigations in Hyderabad have led to raids on
call centers in at least four Indian cities, with each center employing between
100 and 600.
Kumar, the cement salesman, is now part of one online advocacy
group. About 60 victims have joined its WhatsApp channel, where they devise
responses to harassing calls that continue, or provide support.
What saved Kumar on the morning last summer when he lay in bed
and thought of ending his life was a final call to a friend. The friend
recognized the urgency, rushed to the room and within hours helped collect the
$400 Kumar had to pay that day to ease some of the harassment.
“If it wasn’t for my friend, I was 90 percent sure that day I
would commit suicide,” Kumar said. “I still get calls. But now I tell them, ‘Do
whatever you can.’ I am not worried now. I feel protected.”
But for some families, neither the pain nor the harassment has
gone away.
G. Chandra-Mohan, a 38-year-old father of three who worked at a
clothing warehouse, took out loans of about $1,000. After interest, fees and
penalties, plus borrowing from other services to stay afloat, his balance was
five times that. With a salary of $200 a month and the $80 a month that his
wife, Sarita, made from a part-time job at a laboratory, he could not pay it
back.
Chandra-Mohan maxed out his credit cards and drew from dozens of
loan apps, his family said. When he complained of the harassment to police,
they told him to switch off his phone for a few days and return if it
continued, his father-in-law, M. Sailu, said. Police said that he might have
called a cybercrime hotline but that they did not have a record of him visiting
a police station.
One morning, after Chandra-Mohan had driven his wife to her
office on the back of his motorbike, he gave his three young daughters some
change and sent them to their grandparents’ house around the corner. Then, he
hanged himself from a fan.
“Even after his suicide,” his wife said, “the phone keeps
ringing.”
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