Surat cyber cell busts CFOs Rs 9 crore job scam hidden behind corporate facade

AHMEDABAD: Surat Cyber Cell has uncovered one of Gujarats most meticulously engineered cyber-fraud operations, masterminded by a highly educated, white-collar criminal. The accused, Nitesh Govani, a B.Sc. Mathematics graduate and Chief Finance Officer at a reputed Pune-based firm, created a corporate maze so convincing that more than 1,200 people were duped and Rs 9 crore siphoned off. A respectable profile masking a criminal mind On paper, Govani appeared to be the model urban professional: a strong academic background, excellent command over statistics, a Rs 65,000 monthly salary, and a 20% stake in his company. Yet behind this faade, he was driven by greed and an ambition for crores, not a modest monthly income. His criminal behaviour was not new. In 2021, he had been arrested in Ahmedabad for a similar data-entry scam, extorting victims by accusing them of violating digital contracts. A six-month stint in Sabarmati Jail became, according to investigators, a crime research lab in his head rather than a place of reform. A fraud blueprint conceived behind bars Upon release, Govani resolved not to abandon fraud but to refine it. His plan: build a scam that looked entirely legal from the outside. While continuing his job in Pune, he envisioned a more professional and layered scheme, one far harder to detect. Buying a loss-making company to appear legitimate Bank regulations required a company to be at least a year old for subscription-based deductions. To bypass this, Govani purchased a struggling Surat-based firm, Global Index, from its original owner, Sanket Mangrola. This shell company became the anchor of his deception. In 2024, he created a paper-only Dubai entity named Connecting All India, and launched another firm, White Solver, to lure jobseekers with data-entry roles offering Rs 20 per app download. The perfect trap: digital contracts + legal threats The fraud worked by interlinking three companies: White Solver offered the jobs. Global Index acted as an HR consultancy issuing contracts. Connecting All India was presented as the platform provider. Victims were persuaded to e-sign digital contracts, which Govani later weaponised to accuse them of breaches, threatening legal action to extort money. He kept the entire structure clean on paper, filing GST, paying taxes, and keeping documents immaculate. In a calculated move, he even sold Global Index on paper to an individual named Satyendra Pal, ensuring that if investigators traced the company, it would not lead back to him. Yet he continued to operate all login IDs, passwords, and financial mechanisms secretly. Police crack the code The elaborate faade collapsed when the Surat Cyber Cell began probing suspicious call-centre operations. As digital trails converged, the same name, Nitesh Govani, surfaced repeatedly behind multiple companies, transactions, and locations. DCP Bishakha Jain, who led the investigation, stated: He created a network of multiple companies only to make his fraud appear legal. White Solver offered jobs, Global Index managed HR contracts, and Connecting All India was shown as the app company. On paper he had sold Global Index, but we found that Nitesh himself operated all login IDs, passwords, and financial controls. Every document looked lawful, making this one of the most sophisticated cyber-fraud structures we have seen. She added: He exploited peoples desperation for work and loans, trapped them through digital signatures, and extorted money by instilling legal fear. Altogether, he cheated more than 1,200 citizens and siphoned over Rs 9 crore. The end of the mathematical fraud Govani sought not only to extort money but also to inflate the valuation of his bogus Dubai company by amassing vast amounts of user data. However, his mathematical precision and corporate camouflage ultimately collapsed under the weight of forensic cyber investigation. With his arrest, Surat Cyber Cell has exposed how an educated CFO turned his degree, his job title, and corporate sophistication into tools to exploit thousands of innocent people, until the carefully crafted illusion finally crumbled.