Educated youths, WFH, daily targets: Sneak peek into world of loan app collection agents

THE ARREST of five persons by the Maharashtra Cyber police in connection with a loan app scam has given a sneak peek into the world of “collection agents” whose abusive and threatening phone calls have allegedly driven at least eight persons, including one in Mumbai, to suicide across the country in the past 18 months. The police have found that most of these agents are men in their early twenties, well-educated and tasked with making Whatsapp calls from their homes with a daily collection target of Rs 40,000. The police have also found that in order to evade detection, the accused use the Whatsapp number of strangers by duping them into giving the registration One Time Password (OTP) they would receive as SMS.