The CGST Commissionerate in Faridabad has cracked a Rs64.25 crore Input Tax Credit (ITC) scam involving two accused, Sanket Mittal and Naveen Tayal, who were recently arrested and sent to 14-day judicial custody by the Faridabad District Court.
The investigation revealed a complex fraud scheme where fictitious B2B transactions were layered over genuine Business-to-Consumer (B2C) mobile phone sales on popular platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, and Appario. Advanced data analytics and inter-jurisdictional intelligence helped uncover the sophisticated scam.
Two shell companies — Balaji Mobile Addition and Monit Enterprises — were central to the fraud. These entities were registered with forged documents, including the names of the accused’s grandmother and domestic help to conceal their identities. The GST registration process was manipulated with fake electricity bills, which were verified as fraudulent by the local power distributor, Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam.
At the heart of the scam was the misuse of IMEI numbers from Apple iPhones sold legitimately on e-commerce platforms. The accused falsely recorded these IMEIs in internal books to simulate fake purchases, enabling fraudulent ITC claims.
Apple India confirmed the iPhones were sold directly to end consumers, debunking the claim of legitimate business procurement and exposing the GST invoice falsification.
