If you think your student loans are bad, know that it could be far, far worse. Chinese state media reported this week that some online lenders require borrowers to send a nude selfie as collateral. If the They then threaten to post the photo online and send it to their family members if payment isn’t made on time.

The practice largely targets female students who need money to pay for college, and in order to get a higher loan than they otherwise would—reportedly two to five times higher than average—these students must pose naked while holding their IDs and then provide information about their family members. This allows the loan sharks to threaten the release of the photos, and with interest rates that reach as high as 30 percent, those threats can lead borrowers to amass further debt.

In one instance, reported by Computerworld, a student who took out a naked loan worth 500 yuan (the equivalent of $76), struggled to make payments and, having to pull out further loans, saw her debt balloon to 55,000 yuan ($8,352).

The shady scheme appears to have been going on for some time on a lending platform called Jiedaibao, which allows people to make private arrangements to lend or borrow money. And while the company initially told state media that it could not control what lenders asked for as collateral, the recent media exposure may lead to a change in Jiedaibao’s policy. When the Guardian reached out to Jiedaibao on Wednesday, it said they would work with police to investigate the practice the so-called “naked loans.”

Still, that may not be enough to put an end to shady loan schemes, as state-funded student loans are hard to come by, leaving millions of people to find a way to pay for school.



