A shocking case of QR code fraud has come to light in Mumbai’s western suburbs, where fraudsters have been replacing original QR codes placed outside shops with their own, diverting customer payments to their personal bank accounts. The Khar Police have arrested one accused in the matter, who admitted to placing his own QR codes outside hundreds of shops across South Mumbai and the western suburbs.
The incident came to light when Dinesh Gupta (56), a shopkeeper residing in Mira Road and owning ‘Vijay Pan Shop’ on P.D. Hinduja Road in Khar (West), noticed something unusual. Despite customers regularly making payments via UPI, Gupta was not receiving any confirmation or notification on his device. Initially, he suspected a malfunction in his UPI machine as it had stopped making the usual alert sounds after a transaction.
When messages for payments made by customers stopped appearing on his phone altogether, Gupta decided to scan the QR code himself. To his shock, the code displayed the name "Shivam Dubey" instead of his own. Upon closer inspection, he found that someone had pasted a different QR code over his original one.
Gupta then inquired with other nearby shopkeepers and hawkers, only to find that many of them too had their QR codes replaced with stickers bearing the name of Shivam Dubey. Nearly a dozen such cases were reported in the Khar area alone. The affected shopkeepers rushed to Khar Police Station and filed a complaint.
Acting swiftly, the police registered an FIR and began technical surveillance. Using Call Detail Records (CDR) and electronic tracking, they traced and arrested the accused — Shiv Om Dubey (22), a native of Uttar Pradesh currently residing in Machhimar Nagar, Colaba.
During interrogation, Dubey confessed to the scam. He revealed that he held three separate bank accounts, each linked with UPI-enabled QR codes. He would print these QR codes and stick them over existing ones outside pan shops, hawkers’ stalls, and other small businesses. As a result, payments made by unsuspecting customers would get credited directly into his accounts.
Police are now investigating the extent of the fraud and have begun auditing all three of his bank accounts. A detailed probe is underway to identify other locations in Mumbai where this scam may have been executed.