Print-paste con puts his QR at shops, diverts payments to self | Mumbai News – Times of India

Mumbai: Fraudsters too have a sense of ingenuity. The city police have cracked a cyber fraud case where a young fraudster used a unique modus operandi of cheating small shopkeepers using the QR Code. He had taken prints of his own QR code and pasted them on QR code put up by shopkeepers outside their establishments. The accused, Shiv Om Chandrabhan Dubey, a native of Bhakra village in Uttar Pradesh, was nabbed by cyber officers after a meticulous digital and on-ground chase. On investigation, it was confirmed that all the diverted payments were landing in the same account over the last two months, the police said. The fraud came to light on July 12 when Dinesh Dayaram Gupta, a 56-year-old shopkeeper who runs a paan shop near Shivsagar Hotel on P D Hinduja Marg at Khar, realised that the payments he was supposed to receive from customers through online transactions did not reflect in his bank account.Gupta had been using a printed QR code linked to his bank account, which was displayed at the front and side of his shop. As is routine, customers either paid in cash or scanned the code to transfer money directly. On the morning of July 12, despite multiple customers opting for digital payment, Gupta did not receive any SMS confirmations or alerts. Suspecting a technical glitch, he initially ignored the issue. However, upon closer inspection of the QR code later that day, he noticed a second QR code had been pasted over his original one. When he scanned the tampered code, it displayed the name Shivam Dubey, confirming his suspicion of fraud.Concerned, Gupta spoke to his neighbouring vendor, Laxmi Shankar Yadav, who also runs a paan shop, and learnt that the shopkeeper next door too had stopped receiving online payments. On checking, Yadav found his QR code had also been replaced in a similar manner. They later learnt that a few other shopkeepers in the vicinity who had pasted their QR codes outside their shops , it became apparent that this was not an isolated incident. Several other shopkeepers — including Subhash Lochan Verma, who operates a jalebi stall; Shakeel Ahmed Sheikh, a paan vendor near Khar railway station; Suresh Natulal Bhat who runs a tea stall; vegetable vendor Maruti Patil; and banana seller Janu Sheikh — all found that unknown persons had pasted fraudulent QR codes over their originals, effectively diverting business transactions to the fraudster’s account.“We have arrested the accused and are calculating the amount he has cheated. We have frozen three bank account and have recovered Rs 49,000 from him”said Sanjeev Dhumal senior inspector of Khar police station.