Bengaluru: Two diploma graduates and their friend, who had duped over 500 people of nearly Rs 3 crore by offering private loans under a fake finance company, have been arrested by the Electronic City police.

The accused, Vikram Salian (27), Saranraj (26) and Javed (26), the mastermind, were working as executives at a call centre for a couple of months before starting Elite Finance Company at Madiwala and Bommanahalli last year.





The police recovered walkie-talkies, nearly 200 SIM cards and Rs 7.5 lakh cash from the accused.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (southeast) M.B. Boralingaiah said the gang gave the contact numbers of people and SIM cards to telecallers and asked them to offer loans at a very low interest rate. “After convincing people to take loans, telecallers would get all the documents and ask the victims to pay the processing fee depending on the loan amount. After receiving the money from the people, the accused would discard the old SIM cards and get new SIM cards to telecallers to contact a new set of people,” he said.

The victims, who lost anywhere between Rs 5,000 and Rs 30,000, approached the Electronic City police and field complaints after which a case was taken up. A police special team followed the trail of call detail records and arrested the three.

Another official said that the accused had started the company to make easy money. They bribed an agent of a mobile service provider to get 200 SIM cards. All the accused have been detained to conduct further investigations, he said. The officer said that since the accused had worked at a call centre, they knew how the loan business worked and hard hired 18 telecallers, including 14 women. The employees were paid Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per month with a target of contacting 100 people every day. They were offered personal loans ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 20 lakh and also a 2% commission of the loan amount if they convinced people to take loans.