P2P platforms that were once laid to rest in mainland China have recently been found to have moved back to India, causing a large number of Indian people to fall victim. Experts analyze that these malware not only make the Indian people economically damaged, but also may involve the Chinese Communist Party‘s overseas espionage activities.
India busts Chinese fraud ring of 40,000 victims
Recently, India arrested two Chinese women and ten other accomplices for allegedly scamming 40,000 Indians by circulating malware on WhatsApp, a scam ring. This is the latest cybercrime involving Chinese software in India.
The scam group advertised an online multi-layered marketing campaign, luring victims with lucrative rewards, claiming that each participant would receive $41 (Rs. 3,000) per day for spending 30 minutes per day promoting Internet celebrities on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube on the App called “NewWorld.
The truth is that when these unsuspecting participants download the app, the app installs malware to take control of the user’s social media accounts.
According to the Times of India, once users downloaded the app, they were sent social media videos and accounts to click “like” and follow. For each such action, users receive 8 cents (6 rupees) as “payment.
If the user chooses “VIP membership,” they are assigned an exponentially larger number of tasks and are paid exponentially more for each action. Users must pay between $14 and $684 (Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 50,000) to obtain VIP status. Malicious applications continue to entice users to pay for VIP status.
Indian police froze $819,000 (Rs. 60 million) in several bank accounts and recovered $34,125 from arrested Chinese nationals. Indian police said the scammers laundered money and took victims’ money through more than forty shell companies and a large number of bank accounts, crypto wallets, etc.
Google Removes Multiple Chinese Microloan Programs
Meanwhile, another China-related cybercrime incident took place in India. Google has removed 60 Chinese-made microfinance apps from its play store at the request of Hyderabad police.
According to The Times of India, Indian investigative agencies asked Google to remove another 300 Chinese-made apps from its store a few weeks ago.
The Indian agency is investigating how the apps lure unsuspecting people into taking out loans and harass them if they are a day or even hours late in repaying their loans. Six people in India committed suicide in shame after the operators of such loan apps publicly humiliated them, The Times of India reported.
India arrested a Chinese man on Dec. 25 last year for managing at least 11 lending apps that offer small loans at extremely high interest rates to Indians between the ages of 20 and 40.
A total of 15 people were arrested in three different Indian cities (Hyderabad, Delhi and Bangalore) during the raids, and police also seized more than 20 million rupees (about $271,000) in cash, according to The Times of India.
China’s P2P Burst Turns to India
The blockade imposed in India since March 2020 since the Communist Chinese virus (COVID-19) raged has led to massive job losses and more people needing loans, which has created a market demand for such Chinese loan software.
Abhinav Pandya, chief executive of the Usanas Foundation, told The Epoch Times by phone that these apps that offer small, instant loans are very popular in India because the providers do not check customer creditworthiness, have short timeframes, get money quickly and do not have to sign loan agreements required by conventional banks.
He added that this online microloan market is booming because of the popularity of Internet data, the very large number of Indians with Android smartphones, easy online lending, and the fact that Indian society is rapidly transforming into a consumerist economy, while the pandemic led to the recession.
The Indian media, News Times, analyzed that for companies offering such loans, the lending companies would not suffer much loss in case of default because the loans are small and the interest rates are high.
The article said the same Peer-2-Peer (P2P) business was first launched in mainland China in 2012, but the Communist regime put pressure on the industry in 2016, and many once-thriving online lending platforms saw a wave of closures in mid-2018, before the authorities offered several regulations to strengthen the search for P2P lending platforms and ordered their closure. These lenders then turned their attention to India.
Pandya said that the low technological literacy of Indian users and the very weak security system in India led to the prevalence of Chinese P2P programs in India. “The illiteracy rate (in India) is also very high, and many people lack understanding of the harmful effects of such applications.” He said.
“It is likely that Chinese Communist espionage is involved.”
Pandya added that such cybercrime could also be linked to broader Chinese Communist Party espionage. “We know that China (the Chinese Communist Party) is using these digital media platforms to do intelligence (gathering) and to carry out operations that affect the whole world.”
Such operations could also force Indian victims to spy for the CCP or force them to engage in other criminal activities such as smuggling or human trafficking, he said.
Currently, these small loan apps have infiltrated the Indian market and have become a massive security threat to India. Because these apps are made in China, app users may be feeding personal user information into Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Professor Madhav Nalapat, a New Delhi-based strategic analyst, told the Chinese Communist Party over the phone that it is aggressively developing artificial intelligence (AI) and that they want to use AI methods to strengthen their control over people at Home and abroad.
Nalapat analyzed that AI can be used to map out the (emotional) reactions of a group of people to various messages, so that actions can be tailored to fan the “flames of hatred.
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