Even as the technology backed new tax system, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, continues to swell the government coffers, the cyber tax crimes have grown leaps and bound.

While the GST revenue number for November released by the Union ministry of finance on Thursday saw a jump of 11% at Rs 1,45,867 crore as compared to Rs 1,31,526 crore same month last year, a top profile case regarding a GST credit fraud of over Rs 18 crore was uncovered by the Maharashtra GST Department.

In October 2022, GST collection stood at Rs 1,51,718 and was second-highest ever since the inception of GST, next only to the collection in April 2022 which was recorded at the highest ever of Rs 1.68 lakh crore.

According to Maharashtra GST Department, in a series of search operations launched at Aurangabad and Mumbai, following every possible lead, Investigation Wing, Aurangabad Division cracked down a racket of operators in Mumbai, generating fake GST registrations & bank accounts on the basis of forged documents all over India.

During investigations it was found that a fake GST registration of a nonexistent business was obtained at Aurangabad, by using the forged document related to premises, which was used for issuing fake invoices. The fake invoices of value around Rs 121 crore are issued to pass on the fraudulent GST credit of Rs 18 crore.

As per investigations conducted by a team of top administrators including G. Shrikanth, IAS (Joint Commissioner of State Tax (ADM), Aurangabad Division), Pravinkumar Rathi (Deputy Commissioner of State Tax, Investigation), Nitesh Bhandare (Assistant Commissioner of State Tax, Investigation), Prakash Gopnar (Assistant Commissioner of State Tax, Investigation) a network of fake entities is created and operated by Mumbai based businessman.

Investigations also reveal that the fraudsters have obtained fake GST registrations on the strength of forged documents and opened and operated bank accounts in the name of those fake entities. During search of their premises, forged documents like PAN, AADHAR, SIM card covers, mobile handsets, which were used in registration of fake firms and fake bank account opening, have been recovered.

The fake inovices issued in all the firms identified so far, is more than Rs 500 crores and further investigation of these transactions is underway. The aforesaid Mumbai based operator duo have been arrested by Aurangabad Enforcement Wing of State GST Department on 30th November, 2022 in Mumbai.