Favorite frauds – With love from India

What prompted me to write this is the recent Digg story on 450GB paper drive. This talks about a 450GB storage device on paper invented by an Indian. Looking at the discussion page of the Digg is enough to laugh for many days. Many are discussing how he might have done it. No wonder, many Indian Gurus and Yogis are able to cheat millions out of Americans and Europeans (Even now!)

For Indians, frauds are part of their daily life. Every minute they are on guard against possible fraudsters. Indians are not alone in this case, in fact Indians are nowhere near the Nigerians. Some Nigerians have perfected the art of cheating (see 419 scam). They even try to cheat Indians!, but gets caught most of the time. It is estimated that millions of dollars are cheated out of innocent westerners through 419 related scams.

Recent frauds or related stuff from India

NASA exam (Saurabh Singh) – This guy claimed he cleared NASA’s International Scientist Discovery exam and is waiting a call from NASA. Prime minister of India was going to congratulate him personally! But unfortunately the cat was out of the bag at the last minute.

450GB on paper (Sainul Abideen) – An active scam which has many takers, for now.

Gasoline from leaves (Ramar Pillai) – He invented altenative fuel for petrol and was even marketing it! He was later arrested for fraud. It turns out that it contained other petroleum products and was not herbal.

Aliens in Kerala – I live in Kerala. Yeah, some do behave like aliens, but so far I haven’t found a real one! Jokes apart, there was red rain, possibly due to the high pollution in that area.

Airport frauds – An Indian airport is one of the favorite places for a fraudster. He knows that the guy coming by plane will have some money to spare! Fraudsters can appear in the form of a Taxi driver, customs official(!), in fact in any form. It is a big topic, so I will provide some links – Delhi airport | Mumbai airport

Divine statues – Spiritual frauds are rampant in India. A recent case was when statues started drinking milk (due to capillary action). The amount of excitement it generated is unbelievable.

Divine water – Somewhere along the Mumbai coast (I don’t have the news source now), sea water color changed due to chemical pollution. Can you guess what happened? People started diving and drinking it (Many assumed it has divine powers and ended up in hospital).

Big scale scams – There are too many to write here – Hawala scam | Fodder scam | Coffin scam(!) | Stamp paper scam | Bofors scam | Oil for food scam

Further Reading
India is great if you are not a tourist!