Only in China: Of online ‘alongs’ and nude selfies…

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21 January 2018

Jan 22, 2018

More university students in China are being scammed into sending nude photos to loan sharks as collateral.

Nanyang Siang Pau reported that the female students never received the loan money and were blackmailed instead.

Loan sharks have been using this collateral arrangement since 2016 and borrowers would get the money.

A 17-year-old student named Mei Mei from Guangdong said she had to turn to loan sharks when her online business failed last year.
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In the end, she did not get any money but was told to cough up 1,000 yuan.

An unknown person later sent the nude photos to Mei Mei and her parents.

The sender threatened to circulate the photos if she failed to pay up.

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7 Dec 2016

New Straits Times ‏@NST_Online 10h10 hours ago

In China, nude selfies count as collateral for loans
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BEIJING: Hundreds of photos and videos of naked women used as collateral for loans on a Chinese online lending service have leaked onto the web, highlighting regulatory problems in the fast-growing peer-to-peer marketplace.

A 10-gigabyte file posted on the internet exposed the personal details of more than 160 young women who were asked to provide the explicit material to secure money through online lending platform Jiedaibao.

Launched by JD Capital in 2015, Jiedaibao allows lenders to operate anonymously but requires borrowers to reveal their real names when making transactions.

Loan amounts and interest rates can be customised to meet the needs of users -often people who have a hard time accessing loans through more traditional financial institutions, like banks.

Interest on the “nude loans” reached an astonishing 30 per cent a week, according to the Global Times newspaper.

Lenders told female borrowers that if they failed to repay the loans, their nude photos would be sent to their families and friends, whose information was also required for some transactions, the article said.

Material in the file put on the web last Wednesday showed some borrowers also promised to repay loans with sexual favours, according to screen captures posted on social media websites.

In a statement on its official Twitter-like Weibo account, Jiedaibao said it had tracked down the accounts of several borrowers through photos and ID information circulated online and had frozen the suspected lenders’ accounts.

“The ‘nude loans’ deals were mainly initiated and completed offline, and Jiedaibao only played the role of a money transfer platform in the deals,” the statement said.