Man held in Bengaluru for siphoning off Rs 1.4-crore income tax refund: police

The Bengaluru police’s Crime Investigation Department has arrested a man for allegedly siphoning off income tax refunds after hacking into the tax-filing portal.

The CID’s cyber crime division said Monday that Dilip Raje Gowda (32) pocketed refunds due to taxpayers after altering details of bank accounts to which the refunds were to be credited by the income tax department. Fake and fabricated Know Your Customer (KYC) documents were used to open a bank account in the name of the complainant, whose refund of Rs 1,41,84,360 was then credited to the fraudster’s account, according to police.

Police gathered information from various sources and identified the fraudster’s involvement in six more cases, in which refunds of Rs 3.6 crore were lost. A native of Hirisave in Karnataka’s Hassan district, Gowda was arrested from Dharwad. He is in police custody and digital and traditional evidence related to the case has been seized from his possession, police said.