🕵♀️ The Company Behind All the Chinese Loan Scams
In 2020 multiple Chinese loan apps and scams took over India. Turns out one company could be behind most of them. Here's how it spread its web of deceit.
What if we told you that you could earn a pretty good salary without any experience or qualifications?
What if we told you that you could straight away become the director of a company?
All you have to do is sign a few papers from time to time!
If this seems sketchy to you, great! Your Spidey senses are working well.
But, if the offer sounded great to you, you could have been easily trapped in a web of deceit spun by a company that allowed scammy Chinese apps to infiltrate our country.
Here's how it all went down.
🧐 How One Company Allowed Chinese Apps to Take Over India
For a long time now, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) have been trying to root out China-based companies that are trying to defraud and loot Indian citizens. Why?
These companies tried to do so in various ways: by trying to sell fake crypto tokens, by giving fraudulent loans, launching scammy dating websites and much more.
They not only caused a lot of Indians to fall into a debt trap but their harassing calls also led many to commit suicide.
So, obviously the government was eager to get their hands on them.
And very soon it identified a number of companies behind these apps: Su Hui, Shigoo, Mad Elephant, Yellow Tune, and Aliyeye Network.
But what was more interesting was that all of these companies seemed to be linked to one company: Gurugram-based Jilian Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
Jilian Consultants is a subsidiary of Jilian Hong Kong, which owns 99.9% of its shares. However, Jilian India has denied this.
Officially, the company helps other companies that are funded by Chinese money set up shop in India.
But what it actually seems to do is set up shell companies and find dummy directors allowing Chinese companies to carry out fraudulent operations in India.
Boxes filled with company seals and digital signatures of dummy directors have been found in the company's office.
And one of its employees was also the company secretary that signed and endorsed the incorporated documents of two of these fraud companies: Su Hui and Shigoo.
What's more, the official email ID of four of these fraudulent companies was the same: corporatejilian@gmail.com.
And that's not all. There were multiple other links between the Chinese companies and Jilian. It seems that all of these companies were incorporated by Jilian and in some way also controlled by it. Here's how they are all connected:
In fact, one of Jilian's directors, Dortse, is believed to be the mastermind behind the entire scam ring. He was arrested earlier this year and is being investigated.
It is still unclear how big the entire scam ring is and how many more companies are involved.
What is also unclear is the fate of the dummy directors, some as young as 18. They are constantly being called in for the investigation making it difficult for them to hold on to new jobs.
Meanwhile, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office is trying to uncover more about this whole affair to find out whether Jilian is the mastermind behind this whole thing or if there is a bigger player that is controlling Jillian's strings.
⚡In a line: Most Chinese loan scams in India seem to be routed through just one company.
💡Quick question: What measures can be taken to control the spread of such scams?
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