A “seasoned fraudster” who created Rs 100 crore worth fake invoices for business deals over the past three years has been arrested by the Directorate General of GST (Intelligence) – Bengaluru unit, The Times of India reported.
Officials identified the accused as Piyush Kumar Kothari (33) aka Piyush Jain, who was “living the high life… expensive cars and fancy homes.” He was arrested from a house in the Binnypet area on November 28 after a six-month long chase and is now in judicial custody, they told the paper.
“Piyush’s name came up when we were probing the Rs 230-crore tax fraud case. Scrap dealer Haneef Mohammed of Khwaja Enterprises was nabbed for accepting fake invoices to evade GST. Probe revealed that Piyush was the kingpin in getting fake invoices mainly for scrap dealers and accepting kickbacks worth crores from Bengaluru businessmen,” one officer said.
“(Jain) used PAN and Aadhaar card details of people from his village in Rajasthan and created fake companies in their names. He produced invoices through them for bogus services to the tune of Rs 100 crore for businessmen and managed to evade Rs 20.6 crore in taxes,” another officer said.
The other associates were caught early on, but Jain had evaded arrest by changing homes “frequently”.
Among the items found during his arrest include 223 grams of ganja, an iPhone, a Mini Cooper, a Jaguar, and evidence linking him to tax credit frauds and hawala dealings. The officer said Jain used his driver for the hawala frauds, and refused to unlock the phone.
