Bengaluru Woman falls victim to loan app scam: Morphed photos and threats follow

In a distressing incident, a woman residing in Bengaluru has become a victim of a fraudulent loan app scam, leading to the circulation of morphed pictures of her and her daughter. The cyber police have initiated an investigation into the matter after the victim reported the distressing incident.

The woman, a resident of Wilson Gardens, installed a loan app named AMC Credit Park. To her surprise, she found that a substantial amount of money, totaling more than ₹6000, was credited to her account without her submitting any loan request. 

Soon after, she began receiving calls from unknown numbers threatening to leak her pictures to contacts in her phonebook. Disturbingly, the victim also discovered that some of her contacts had received manipulated images of her daughter.

As per reports, the victim received calls from different numbers with country codes such as USA, Bangladesh, Indonesia, etc. The cyber criminals utilized Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to mask their IP addresses and made threatening calls, displaying numbers from various countries.

The victim, unknowingly, had granted access to her pictures during the installation of the app, allowing the fraudsters to manipulate them. The police have registered a case at the Central Cyber Economic and Narcotics Crime (CEN) police station under sections 66D (Punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) and 67 (Punishment for publishing and transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.

Bengaluru Police issued a warning to the public about the risks associated with fraudulent loan apps, urging them to refrain from downloading and borrowing money from unauthorized service providers. Investigations into the case are ongoing, with efforts to apprehend the perpetrators and curb such cybercrimes.