The lawyer explained why Russians should not take microloans

Fraudsters can encourage people to take out loans

Microloans can be dangerous due to high interest rates and hidden fees that can leave the borrower in debt. However, Russians still fall for the tricks of “financiers” who are essentially scammers.

People who take out microloans are usually in financial difficulties and cannot get a loan from a bank due to bad credit history or low income. Microloans are often provided by illegal lenders who may use violent debt collection methods or threaten borrowers. In addition, they may be involved in working with organizations involved in money laundering or other criminal activities.

Another scary thing is when a microloan is taken out for a person without his knowledge.

“Microloans are a classic scam,” says lawyer Evgeny Antonov. “The man lives, he’s quite wealthy, he doesn’t take out loans, he doesn’t look at his credit history. At some point, a person finds out that he has been sued. A complaint comes from a microfinance organization that he does not pay money.

What does the victim ideally do? Writes a statement to the police. The police either lose the material, because it is not interesting to deal with such trifles, or the police make a decision to refuse to initiate a criminal case, because if it is a loan, you need to go to court.

– I had a situation when a person looked at his credit history. And it turned out that he had seven such microloans. He doesn’t know about them. One of them was sued. We see that there was a remote agreement online with passport data.

But there are some peculiarities. The bank card to which the loan was transferred has no relation to the person, the phone number is not his, and he did not enter into an agreement.

The court asks who owns the card and phone number – is it the defendant? A request is immediately made to the cellular company to whom the phone is registered. If two negative answers mean the loan is fraudulent. And the bank’s security service must go to court itself – look for the money from the one who stole it from you.

“When we found out that the phone number and card were not our client, then the microfinance organization itself came to court and abandoned the claim,” says Evgeny Antonov. “And if she hadn’t refused, we could have collected more money from her.”

It often happens that the microfinance organization itself initiates an internal investigation. “These are smart microfinance organizations that do not take the case to court, do an internal audit and begin to look for scammers themselves,” the lawyer comments. – This link – telephone number, passport data and card numbers – the triangle that scammers walk around – does not need to be given. But even if there is this data, without the codes that the scammers ask for, they will not be able to do anything.”