Tax assistant Pramod Prabhakar reportedly revealed that he hacked the account of an officer of the rank of deputy commissioner of police to operate the scandal..
The scamsters who defrauded the income-tax department of at least Rs3 crore by filing fake e-returns used the hacked account of a senior I-T officer, the Central Bureau of Investigation has found.
Tax assistant Pramod Prabhakar, arrested by the CBI, reportedly revealed that he hacked the account of an officer of the rank of deputy commissioner of police to operate the scandal. Prabhakar and two other I-T officers were arrested in connection with the scandal.
According to the CBI, Prabhakar used the DCP’s username and password to feed information of the PAN-card holders and file fake e-returns in their names. Prabhakar was posted in the DCP’s office until December.
Prima facie, the CBI has ruled out the DCP’s involvement in the scandal. But it will record his statement.
Prabhakar reportedly admitted exploiting several loopholes in the I-T department’s computer system. “After the DCP left his office, Prabhakar would log in to his account and use the PANs he had obtained to file the fake e-returns,” a CBI officer said, on condition
of anonymity.
The bureau has submitted a report to the I-T department on the loopholes in its systems. For instance, the RSA code can be accessed for four hours even after logging out. Also, the system does not show details of when an account was accessed, for how many hours, and by whom.
The others arrested in the case are Dilip Vyas, the alleged mastermind, television artiste Manoj Sangtiyani, and tax assistants Rajesh Pillai and Raju Nagpure.
The CBI said Vyas and Prabhakar had invested their ill-gotten gains in real estate in Mira Road and Andheri. “They also had a fancy for high-end cars,” said CBI superintendent Abhin Modak. Each bought a couple of sports utility vehicles (SUVs).
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