Family of Chinese student forced to give nude selfies to loan sharks to pay off her debts
THE STAR
SHANGHAI: A father has had to sell the family home to pay off huge online loans run up by his daughter at college in eastern China, according to a news website report.
Some loan sharks made the young woman give them nude pictures of herself as a form of insurance to make sure the loans were paid off and have intimidated her and her family, the news website Youth.cn reported.
Some of the pictures of the woman were published on the internet when she failed to come up with the cash.
The student, Xiao Yu, now owes more than 500,000 yuan (HK$568,000) to 59 lenders, according to the report.
She started to borrow online when she was in the first year of the university at Hefei in Anhui province and had a boyfriend, her father was quoted as saying.
She first borrowed about 2,000 yuan, but her debts began to spiral.
The weekly interest rate on the money she owes is now about 30 per cent.
Some debt collectors have regularly contacted her parents and friends about unpaid loans, posting personal information on the online bulletin of her school and sending false messages about her to her classmates, she was quoted as saying.
Her father said: “I would receive at least 30 phone calls a day from debt collectors. Some are extremely tough and hard to talk to.”
Her father earns 4,000 yuan a month as a driver and also has a son.
He was quoted as saying that the only way to pay off his daughter’s debts was to sell the family home. The report gave no details of where the family live.
It is not the first time the Chinese media have reported on women students having to give loan sharks nude pictures.
Some students were even forced into prostitution to pay off debts, with borrowers threatening to release their nude photos, according to previous media reports.
