Easy Credit Apps Come at a High Cost in Mexico Gabrielle Gorder - InSight Crime
go to original August 16, 2022

Scammers in Mexico have yet again evolved their modus operandi by using express credit apps to extort users and drain their bank accounts.

According to a recent investigation by Publimétro, a raft of unlicensed credit apps offering immediate loans at high interest rates have become popular in Mexico. These apps do not require any documentation to be submitted by the user and transfer loan money in less than 24 hours.

However, in signing up for such loans, users are exposing themselves and their families to real dangers. These are apps are part of well-coordinated extortion schemes, known as montadeudas (mounting debt), which ramp up pressure on customers to make them pay up.

First, in order to sign up for the app, users must allow it to access their photo gallery and contacts. Then, interest fees will go up rapidly to exorbitant amounts, with little to no warning, according to Milenio. In some instances, users were charged as much as 500 percent of the value of the original loan.

If a user cannot pay this back, the owners of the app use the access they have gained to the user’s personal details to issue threats or contact loved ones.

Contacts gleaned from users’ phones have received calls or WhatsApp messages telling them to get the user to pay up. Social media accounts have been taken over. Personal materials gained from the cellphone have been published online or shared with contacts. In some cases, direct threats are made against them and their family.

One user said he was called and told, “I will dismember your family if you don’t pay us back in 20 minutes,” according to one media report.

According to Mexico’s National Commission for the Protection of Financial Service Users (Comisión Nacional para la Protección y Defensa de los Usuarios de Servicios Financieros - Condusef), at least 33,000 people have fallen victim to these scams so far this year. This is unsurprising considering as many as 130 such express cash apps have popped up in the country. They bait customers by advertising on social media and claiming that no credit history is needed.

The situation has become so severe that Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has commented. At his daily press conference on July 5, he warned against the apps, claiming that “we can say the so-called montadeudas are part of organized crime.”

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