Ahmedabad: The Ahmedabad City Cybercrime Unit has arrested a Class 12-pass man from Jharkhand who allegedly posed as a senior Income Tax officer and ran a nationwide job fraud network.

The accused, Aman Kumar Verma (36), is said to have created fake government websites and issued forged appointment letters to deceive job aspirants. In one shocking case, he allegedly sent a woman from Ahmedabad for a week-long “training” at what appeared to be the Accountant General’s (AG) Office in Bengaluru, before vanishing with her money.

Police said Verma approached job seekers while posing as the Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, using email IDs resembling official government domains. He promised lucrative government jobs, conducted fake interviews, and issued counterfeit appointment letters under the name “Office of the Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Karnataka and Goa Region, Bengaluru.”

In the Ahmedabad case, Verma allegedly collected ₹9.2 lakh from the complainant, promising her a position as an Income Tax Officer. He then summoned her to Bengaluru, where she attended a week-long “training” session at what was purported to be the AG’s office.

During the probe, police found that 45 bank accounts linked to Verma were associated with more than 100 online complaints filed on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal across Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Delhi, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh.

Explaining the fraud’s eight-step modus operandi, police said Verma would first gain victims’ trust by boasting about his “connections” in government offices, issue fake appointment letters, and collect money through benami bank accounts opened in the names of poor individuals. To maintain confidence, he would sometimes return small amounts of money before eventually disappearing once larger sums were transferred to other accounts.

Police added that Verma, a Class 12-pass-out with a diploma in computer accounting, had previously been booked by the CBI in 2023 for duping 18 job seekers under the alias “Rupesh.” In that case, he posed as an official from the Indian Railways, GST, and the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to defraud candidates. DeshGujarat