Chinese online loan sharks demand nude photos as guarantees

Beijing: Web-based loan sharks in China have found an unconventional way of guaranteeing loans: demanding naked photos from female borrowers.

The state-run Southern Metropolis Daily reported this week that private lenders are asking female borrowers to send nude photos of themselves along with their ID cards, warning that the photos will be made public if payments are not made on time.

One of the borrowers told the newspaper that she first borrowed 500 yuan ($76) from an online loan provider with a weekly interest rate of 30 per cent.

She kept taking out news loans to pay off old ones, and her debt snowballed to 55,000 yuan ($8,347) when the lender demanded a nude photo of her as a guarantee for new loans.