New Delhi, Oct 31 (IANS) Eight people, including five women, were arrested for running an educationa loan racket involving transactions worth over Rs.one crore, police said Sunday. The gang has duped over 500 students so far.

‘At a raid in Parmanand Colony in Mukherjee Nagar, we arrested Varun Sardana, 24 – the gang leader – Himanshu Sharma, 21, Sunny Pal, 22, and five girls,’ Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Neeraj Thakur said.

Sardana, the brain behind the the racket, roped in his friends Sharma and Pal. They together recruited and trained the girls for the sales and marketing part.

The gang even got its advertisements published in leading national dailies and provided a phone number through which the students contacted them.

They would ask for an initial amount of Rs.2,500-Rs.3,000 from the client as ‘processing fee’, and also lure them into paying the first installment of the loan amount and then would run away and discard the phone number.

‘These people would change their address within a couple of months to avoid being caught,’ Thakur said.

Delhi Police Thursday raided and nabbed all the accused and recovered 26 mobile phones, 16 bank accounts, 57 unused SIM cards, 18 ATM cards — all acquired through fake IDs.