2 held for RERA website con

Accused Tried To Dupe Promoters With Deceptive URL

Police have arrested two men in connection with a URL that was deceptively similar to that of the Gujarat Real Estate Regulatory Authority (GUJRERA) website. In this case of typo squatting, an attempt was made to dupe hundreds of gullible promoters. The operators of the fraud website congratulated promoters who inadvertently had uploaded their documents on the website.

The accused had launched www.gujrera.in. The URL of the official website is www.gujrera.gujarat.gov.in. The main operator behind the fake website communicated with promoters using the mail address info@gujrera.in. The email ID of the authority is inforera@gujarat.gov.in. On Wednesday, the cyber cell of the Ahmedabad city police arrested Jayesh Lakhwani, 32, from Navrangpura; and Mutul Thakkar, 37, from Gondal. Lakhwani is a chartered accountant.

Once the gullible promoters mailed their project details to the website, Thakkar would mail them back a message which said, “Happy to have successfully completed registration and compliance of 100 + projects in Gujarat State”.

Deputy commissioner of police, cyber cell, Rajdeepsinh Jhala said that the operators of the fake website claimed that they provide services for RERA registrations as well as help for quarterly and annual filings required under the RERA Act. The matter came to light when a promoter informed the Gujarat RERA office of the website and the fake email id. GujRERA official Mayur Shah registered a complaint with the cyber cell. “We registered an offence under section 66 (C)” Jhala said. Inspector V B Barad said that his team located the IP address of the device from which the fake mail ID was created and arrested Thakkar and Lakhwani.

“During interrogation it came to light that Thakker, who runs a digital signature consultancy, had purchased the domain for Rs 30,000 from Lakhwani who had got the ‘gujrera’ domain registered at a web hosting site,” Barad said. “We are investigating the role of both these men. After buying the domain from Lakhwani, Thakker had created the website to make a quick buck.”