Falling into the trap of online lending apps again

Talking about the situation, Ms. HX said that she is a single mother, having to support her elderly mother and daughter. To have money for living expenses, pay for her children's school fees, and treat her mother's illness, in addition to her income from her supermarket employee salary, she had to borrow money from a number of financial companies and still maintain her ability to repay the debt. However, since July 2021, she contracted Covid-19 and was unemployed for 3 months, with no income to repay the loans from the financial company.

"Seeing the Tieu Dung VCB app advertising on social networks about a consumer loan package from 40 - 450 million VND to support customers during the Covid-19 pandemic, I tried to contact and was introduced by a consultant who advertised very well: "loan without deposit - no tax - no fee, disbursement to bank account number, absolute confidentiality, with loan contract, bad debt can still borrow...". The conditions for loan approval are also very easy, just need an ATM card registered for online money transfer service and the balance in the card must be 10% of the loan value to prove the ability to pay" - Ms. HX said.

It is worth mentioning that, although the app's consultant required a balance in the account to prove the ability to repay the debt, she was told by the app's staff to "get around" the situation by "borrowing from relatives" and then returning it after the loan application was approved. "When I saw the app advertising loans, I thought about borrowing to cover the expenses. I also borrowed from friends to have enough 12 million VND to deposit into the bank account to prove my ability to repay the debt, but the scam app took it all," said Ms. HX.

Not only that, panicked because she was scammed out of the money she borrowed from her friends, while she still had no money to live on and pay off the debt to the finance company, Ms. XH contacted another online lending app called VCTT but was scammed again.

"The staff of this app said they approved a loan of 50 million VND for me, then made a file to transfer money into my account. But then they tricked me into thinking that my account had an error, and that if I wanted to fix the file and disburse the money, I had to transfer them 20 million VND. Worried because I needed to borrow money, I borrowed 20 million VND from my friends to transfer to them to fix the file, but in the end I lost everything" - Ms. HX said sadly.

Notably, this is not the first time a reader has reported being scammed when borrowing money online via a phone application. Previously, Nguoi Lao Dong Newspaper has repeatedly reported that many fraudulent online lending applications, vaguely impersonating financial companies and commercial banks to introduce loans, are actually scams, luring borrowers to have their applications approved on the condition that they transfer a fee of 10-20 million VND to them, then disappear.

Financial expert - Dr. Dinh The Hien warned that the situation of fraud to appropriate people's money like the above case is becoming more and more common, if people are not vigilant, they will easily become victims of high-tech criminals. For example, transferring money to individuals who are employees of online lending apps in the form of fees is actually a scam. Not only is it a scam to lend money and then appropriate fees, there are many other scams such as impersonating bank employees, financial companies, impersonating police, courts... to lure and scare people to appropriate money.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/kinh-te/lai-sap-bay-app-cho-vay-online-20211221210349213.htm