Six held for alleged income tax refund fraud

Six people including a tax consultant and a female employee doing outsourced work for the Income Tax Department, were arrested today for an alleged fraudulent tax refund scam worth Rs 1.15 crore that surfaced at the Masabtank Income Tax office here, police said.

Prime accused Shaik Mohammad Jahangir and B Anju Rani are among the six persons arrested so far, out of 15 accused, Detective Department Deputy Commissioner of Police P J Victor said. Property worth Rs 50 lakhs including house documents, cars and gold ornaments were seized from them, besides freezing of their bank accounts.
A total of 15 accused have been identified so far and the rest are yet to be apprehended and properties seized, he said, adding that Jahangir who ran a tax consultancy service at Gudimalkapur, had opened 24 bank accounts in different public and private sector banks using fake PAN cards and addresses.
After acquainting himself with an outsourcing firm data entry operator Anju Rani, he got her to enter fictitious data on income tax returns under Section 154 of the IT Act from December 2010 to March 2012, using the AST software maintained by the Income Tax Department.
While processing the fraudulent refunds, she entered the address of Priya Colony in Mehadipatnam for delivery of the refund orders, he said. After entering the rectification data an Income tax pay order is automatically generated at an SBI branch exclusively maintained for Income Tax refunds at Mumbai and the same was delivered to the said address, he said.
The accused conducted as many as 150 fraudulent transactions between December 2010 to March 2012, causing a loss worth Rs 1.15 crores to the Income Tax Department, he said.
PTI