Quirky World: Chinese lenders seeking naked photos as collateral

Some of the stranger stories from around the globe

CHINA: Web-based loan sharks in China have found an unconventional way of guaranteeing loans: demanding naked photos from cash-strapped female college students who want to borrow money.

The state-run Southern Metropolis Daily reported this week that private lenders are asking the young women to send nude photos of themselves as a form of collateral, along with copies of their ID cards. They warn 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%. She kept taking out new 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.

She told the newspaper that many of her female classmates had been swept into the scheme but were unwilling to speak up.

The woman was planning to report the incident to police, the newspaper said.

Posing as a potential client, a reporter for the newspaper was able to get evidence of loan sharks demanding naked photos by joining online chat groups frequented by lenders.

FRANCE:

A suspected drugs dealer facing trial in France tried to pay his half-million-euro bail in cash - but he ended up back behind bars after prosecutors objected to a payment in 1,000 banknotes smelling of glue.

A public prosecutor explained to the court in Lyon his surprise when 29 people turned up to produce the payment on the suspect’s behalf in envelopes filled with large-denomination banknotes. The 30-year-old suspect was ordered back to jail until his trial in September on drug dealing charges, despite his lawyer’s plea that the bail order did not stipulate payment had to be made by cheque.

The attempted payment prompted the court to order a separate money-laundering enquiry. It was not clear whether the banknotes would be returned to those who proffered them.

USA: In Massachusetts, an exclusive private school has filed a $2m lawsuit, asking a judge to force a more affordable school that serves a large number of low-income students to change its name.

The Commonwealth School in Boston says Commonwealth Academy in Springfield deceptively uses the word “commonwealth,” causing the Boston school “great harm”.

The academy has offered to include “Springfield” in its name but refuses to drop “commonwealth.” It accuses the Boston school of engaging in a “knowingly false and malicious campaign.”

Annual tuition and fees at the Commonwealth School in Boston’s Back Bay are $40,000. At Springfield’s Commonwealth Academy, about 90 miles away, annual average tuition is less than $1,200. The Commonwealth School was founded in 1957; Commonwealth Academy was founded in 2011.

USA: A 9-year-old California boy braved strong currents and cold water to swim from San Francisco to Alcatraz Island and back.

James Savage set a record as the youngest swimmer to make the journey to the former prison.

By completing the swim, the fourth-grader from Los Banos breaks a record previously held by a 10-year-old boy. James says that waves in the San Francisco Bay hitting him in the face 30 minutes into his swim made him want to give up.

His father says he had offered his son $100 as a reward; to encourage his struggling son, his father doubled it to $200.

James pushed forward, making it to Alcatraz and back in a little more than two hours. Alcatraz is over a mile from the mainland.