BH-Registration scam: How companies are offering BH-plates for a fee

Someone dropped in an email offering a "Paid BH Registration" service.

GTO shared this with other enthusiasts.

Can one blame the government for getting stricter & stricter? We have seen big industrialists default on TDS payments. We have seen airline CEOs throw lavish parties on yachts, while their air hostesses & aircraft engineers didn't receive salaries for months. India is home to thousands of GST scams.

Before blaming the government, we should take a long hard look at ourselves too.

Someone dropped in this email offering a "Paid BH Registration" service to BHPians. I am going to blank the details out, but just showing the kind of scams happening in India. Hopefully, such a thread helps the government nab such scamsters.

Source

Dear Team-BHP, I am XXX XXX, living in XXX, Gujarat. I have been in the IT industry for the last XX years, working for MNCs like Microsoft.

I'm now running my own software company. I’ve been following Team-BHP since the early 2000s, and all my car purchases so far have been based on the reviews and forum discussions on Team-BHP. So, thank you, Team-BHP!

I'm writing to offer a paid service for BH-series registration for Team-BHP members and their friends / families. My company employees are eligible for BH-series because our company is registered in 4 states with separate GSTs. I did that because I wanted a BH-series number for our recent XXXXXXXX (note from GTO = It's a luxury car costing 90-lakhs OTR). Unfortunately, the company's directors (I am) cannot avail of this facility. It is open only to the employees of the company. I offer this facility to Team-BHP members and their friends and families - to get BH-series RC using my company on a payment basis. The one-time fee we will charge for one registration is INR 50,000 or 3% of the car's ex-showroom price - whichever is higher.

Following are the steps to get BH-series via our company:

1. The interested person enrols in our online software training course by paying 99k (fully refunded) our BH-series fee.

2. We hire the person after completion of the course as an expert consultant, drawing a salary of 33k per month. The person continues the current job as well (note from GTO = their company further gets a tax benefit on this salary paid, making their actual fee higher than the 50k stated earlier).

3. As our company employee, the person buys the vehicle and applies for BH-series from Gujarat (we recommend Gujarat, as it is easy to get BH-series here). Our company provides all requisite documents.

4. The person gets the 99k paid back in three months as a monthly salary of 33k. If the BH-series number is successfully obtained, the person can optionally exit the company. Otherwise, the person can pay 99k for another course and remain on the payroll by getting 33k for another three months (note from GTO = more benefits for their company).

5. If the BH-series request is rejected, the company refunds the course fee (99k) BH-series fee, deducting only 5000 as incidence expenses.

Please let Team-BHPians contact me at XXX@XXXXXX.com or WhatsApp/call me at XXXXXXXXXX for further details.

Thanks,

XXXXXXXXXX

Director, XXXX

Regd. Offices in 4 Cities

Here's what BHPian Axe77 had to say on the matter:

This is so disappointing. Not surprising though. But disappointing nevertheless, like many other things.

In order to protect against the most egregious mischief makers, rules unfortunately wrap around the genuine cases also into a plethora of impossible paperwork.

Some of the conditions that I see in the new MH circular are clearly protecting against some of these aspects - like financial ability to buy a vehicle for instance so the reverse structuring is not done - i.e. an eligible BH employee buys a benami car for someone else. But some of the other conditions are still plain overreach and seem to be from the basic objective of preventing the loss of upfront registration revenue.

The next step might even be scamsters making this promise and relieving other aspiring scamsters of their money by asking for some payment upfront. The cycle will be properly complete then.

Here's what BHPian saket77 had to say on the matter:

This BH series registration mechanism is anyway not fair in my opinion. The Govt. cannot discriminate people based on their employment. I simply cannot get my head around this fact that a system like this exists. We need a simpler mechanism in place which gives hardly any benefit to the car owners to register their cars out of state.

I would NOT say that all states should charge the same road tax because states like KA, MH etc offer lots of good employment opportunities to people and states should have an incentive for that compared to places like BR, JH, WB etc. But it is upto the Govt to find a better way out than giving preferential treatment to some people only because either they are Central Govt employees or their employer has multi-location offices.

Here's what BHPian anjan_c2007 had to say on the matter:

Fishy and quite a fly by night operator here who represents XXXXXXXXXX as Director, XXXX with allegedly Regd. Offices in 4 Cities.

• Now with a salary of 33K a month (will be fired after 3 months) if someone buys even a Creta, would the Income Tax deptt not pounce upon him?
• This Director overtly appears "selfless" doing good and only good for others by offering them BH registrations though he is himself not eligible.
• To me, even if we bhpians dismiss the offer as a potential scam and trap to avoid landing in trouble, there are hundreds who could make a beeline for the "modest" offer by this Director.
• I can surely foresee that this Director who has four offices in India, would generate much, much more turnover and profits through this fraudulent BH business than whatever his core business domains are.

Read BHPian comments for more insights and information.