The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), has busted a racket in which a conman created a string of 93 fake firms to fraudulently claim input tax credit (ITC) from the government to the tune of Rs 491 crore.

DGGI officials of the Gurugram unit in National Capital Region got specific inputs from their counterparts in the Jaipur Zonal unit that a person was providing cloud storage facility to various persons across India, for carrying out their work from remote locations and storing data. The Hard Disk was then recovered from the cloud service provider and scrutinized. The identity of the culprit was traced through the data contained in the Hard Disk, and it was found that he was running a nexus of 93 fake firms.

Searches conducted by the Gurugram unit of DGGI on January 18 showed that various firms did not exist at their given addresses. The key operative who was actively using the cloud storage service and running the firms was arrested from Hansi in Haryana.

The culprit has been sent to 14 days of judicial custody by the Magistrate and further investigation in the case is underway.