Mumbai Crime: 22-Year-Old Security Guard Arrested For QR Code Fraud, Diverts Shopkeepers' Payments To Own Accounts

Mumbai: A 22-year-old, 10th-pass security guard, Shiv Om Chandrabhan Dubey, came up with a unique idea to cheat shopkeepers by diverting their payments into his own bank accounts. The Khar police arrested him, and his fraudulent method shocked everyone.

He printed his own QR code and pasted it over legitimate QR codes placed outside shops and stalls in South Mumbai and the western suburbs. The police have frozen his three bank accounts and recovered Rs 49,000 from him. Dubey resides in Macchimar Nagar in Colaba and hails from Bhakar village in Uttar Pradesh.

According to the police, the complainant, Dinesh Gupta, 56, who lives in Mira Road East and runs a paan shop on PD Hinduja Marg in Khar West, realised that customers’ payments were not being credited to his bank account.

On July 12, several customers visited his stall and paid via QR code, but he did not receive any payment notifications from his bank. Initially, he ignored the issue, assuming it was a technical problem.

Later, he checked the QR code displayed outside his stall and found that someone had pasted another QR code over the original. When he scanned the tampered code, it displayed the name Shivam Dubey, which shocked him.

Gupta then approached his neighbour, shopkeeper Laxmi Yadav, who had faced a similar issue where customers’ payments were not credited to his account. Yadav also checked his QR code and found it tampered with; when he scanned it, the same name — Shivam Dubey — appeared. Realising it was a scam, Gupta approached the Khar police and filed a complaint.

A police officer stated, “During the investigation, it was revealed that Dubey had replaced his QR code on several legitimate ones outside shops, stalls, and vegetable vendors. He especially targeted outside railway shops and vegetable vendors for the past two months. Through this method, all payments meant for the shopkeepers and vendors were diverted into his three bank accounts. He claimed he got this idea from a YouTube video.”

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The police have frozen Dubey’s three bank accounts — with HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, and IDFC Bank — and collected bank statements from all three banks for the period from January 1, 2025, to July 16, 2025. The court has remanded him in police custody until July 21.