Wednesday, 23 October 2024
Wednesday, 23 October 2024
A man masqueraded as a judge in his own fake tribunal and passed ‘judgments’ for five years. He created a bogus tribunal, like a real courtroom, and preyed on unsuspecting individuals entangled in land disputes, promising swift resolutions for hefty fees. For five years.
This was a nefarious scheme orchestrated since 2019, especially in land deals in Gandhinagar, by one man, according to the Gujarat police who earlier this week arrested Morris Samuel Christian, the accused.
The cops said they arrested Christian for cheating people by posing as the judge of an arbitral tribunal and passing favourable orders, claiming he has been appointed as an arbitrator by a competent court to adjudicate legal disputes.
As far as masquerades go, it is pretty epic. Gandhinagar’s Christian is none less than Frank Abagnale Jr, a conman on whom Oscar winning director Steven Spielberg made the film Catch Me If You Can.
Yes, Gujarat, the land of the fabled entrepreneurial spirit, has been throwing up such baffling headlines of scamming and phishing. Here are a few more in recent years.
In July 2022, a bunch of people in a village in Gujarat hosted a fake cricket league along the lines of the cash-rich IPL. Except, in this case the “cash” came via Telegram app, from cities like Moscow, Voronezh and Tver.
Russian gamblers reportedly placed bets for teams like Maharashtra Rangers and Palanpur Sports Kings as the matches were live-streamed on YouTube. Labourers, farmers and unemployed youths hired for Rs 400, played cricket.
According to a BBC report: “The league - which was called Century Hitters T20 - had half-a-dozen "teams" named after different Indian states, nearly two dozen locals who were paid to turn out for all the teams, two umpires, and two organisers, the police said. One of the organisers doubled up as a commentator and mimicked a well-known cricket Indian pundit.”
While Nitin Gadkari memes might be setting the internet afire over toll tax rates, in Gujarat’s Morbi it was some enterprising men who cashed in.
They set up a fake toll plaza at a detour from National Highway 8A and forced vehicles to take the detour. To be fair, they charged less than the National Highways Authority of India’s official toll point, around 600 metre away.
The fake toll plaza was reportedly up for 12 years and the scamsters collected Rs 75 crore. The five men accused of masterminding the scheme apparently gave the money to the village. Robin Hood che.
Then there was Sandeep Rajput, who was a fake “executive engineer” working at the irrigation department in Gujarat’s Bodeli.
According to a report in the Deccan Herald in October 2023, “Rajput posed as an executive engineer and forged documents, signatures and many records to claim as government officer. Over the period, the FIR stated, he received 93 government projects for which he gleaned funds to the tune of Rs 415 crore.”
Rajput was not a lone ranger. He was a part of a bigger fake government office racket. And his accomplice was a former Indian Administrative Service officer.
According to a report in the Indian Express in November 2023, these people ran six fake government offices and commissioned nearly 100 irrigation projects, issued cheques without any verification and carried out a fraud amounting to Rs 18 crore.
Following their footsteps was a fake government office in Gujarat’s Modasa district. Real government officials, along with retired government officials of the state’s irrigation department, floated a fake office. That too, in a residential bungalow and for about three years.
According to a report in the Gujarat Samachar in May 2024, an investigation found “ over 50 rubber stamps, blank bills, letter pads, approval letters, printers, and computers in the fake office. Blank bills from various firms were also discovered”.
But Anupam Kher as Mahatma Gandhi is perhaps the peak of Gujarati scamster innovation.
On October 16, cops nabbed three men for cheating a bullion trader by handing him counterfeit currency notes featuring the face of actor Anupam Kher to buy gold worth Rs 1.5 crore.
According to cops, one of the accused dressed like a Sikh and “persuaded a printing shop owner to print a large quantity of these notes claiming they will be used in a movie as a prop with Kher himself acting in the movie. Since it was not an exact replica of the original note, the shop owner did not have any suspicion.”
“After cutting the notes and preparing bundles, they wrapped them using paper strips with SBI logo in such a way that Kher’s photo remained covered”.
