The chairman of the Investment Alert Task Force (SWI) Tongam L. Tobing explained several characteristics of illegal online loans so that people are more alert in the midst of the rampant illegal loan traps. First, the loan is not registered with the OJK.
“The first characteristic of illegal loans that we saw was that they were not registered with the OJK. Then it was easy to borrow only a capital card and a photo of yourself. That’s why we often say that if you have an ID card, you can borrow it from an illegal loan because only your ID card is seen,” he said in a virtual discussion Monday (21/6). Tongam also revealed that this loan asked the borrower to allow access to all data and contacts on the cellphone.
“This is a disaster, so always the power of illegal borrowing is contact data on cellphones. The power is there. Therefore, our society is always offered to allow this (data and contact access),” he explained.
Tongam explained that the habit of digging holes to cover holes was one of the causes for people to be trapped in illegal pinjol. In fact, Tongam said, there were cases where one person had debts in 141 loans at once because of this habit.
“Our people want to borrow to cover old loans, so it’s not uncommon like the honorary teacher in Semarang, 114 online loans. He should have stopped the 3rd loan first. This is up to 100 and there are people who reach 141,” he said.
In fact, Tongam said, what people get from illegal loans is very inhumane.
“The fee is very high. Borrowing Rp. 1 million transferred is only Rp. 600 thousand. The interest is promised, for example, 0.5 percent per day to 2 percent per day,” he explained.
Not only that, the repayment period or deadline also changes frequently, such as from 90 days to 7 days. Then if the borrower is late in paying, the illegal borrower makes unethical collections with terror, intimidation and harassment.
Therefore, he asked the public to be more careful with money lending services through ‘fake’ fintech. You do this by first looking at the list of peer to peer lending fintechs registered with the Financial Services Authority.