Every day, we hear about fraudsters duping people in various ways. With the advent of internet and digitisation, their modus operandi has also improved. Their newer techniques involve ATMs, cloning of debit/credit cards and surreptitious withdrawals from bank accounts etc.
I feel that every incident is educative for the uninitiated who must learn how not to be cheated. The joke is that there are people who devise ways to crack a new technique even before it is evolved.
At times, they have baffled even the police force created to deal with cyber crime. Their jaws dropped when the arrested conmen demonstrated their technique. I am sure many oldtimers of the pre-internet era would find the modern day tricks incomprehensible. Given a choice they would like to be cheated the old way by some traditional fraudster.
I am reminded of a co-professional of the pre-internet times, one SK, who devised his own ingenious way of making money through a totally harmless method some time during the 1970s and 1980s.
His tools were glib talking and a photo frame that adorned his living room in his rented flat. Located in Hazratganj, the city’s posh area, the flat was a stone’s throw from the huge building housing offices of the Lucknow Division of the Northern Railway. Its proximity proved to be a boon for SK.
As a representative of the journal he worked for he would frequently visit the offices of the DRM (Divisional Railway Manager) of the day as well as another senior officer who were responsible for transfers and postings of the staff working under them.
SK discovered that at any given time, there always existed in the DRM office compound some railway men seeking their transfer or posting at places of their choice for family or other reasons.
For them seeking their union’s intervention proved only counter-productive for despite its being powerful, officers detested such pressures leaving the employee high and dry.
SK saw in this a “viable’’ opportunity. He offered to help them out using his “friendship” with the division’s top officials. But the employees did not fall for it wondering how a non-railway person, an outsider, could be effective in a purely internal administrative matter.
But, hats off to SK, his ingenuity in devising the right method paid off.
Having befriended the top officials, he invited them one day to tea at his place. Being too pre-occupied, the officials pleaded reluctance but that would have upset SK’s carefully drawn plan. Using his PR skills and speaking power, SK succeeded in persuading them.
His flat literally being a stone’s throw away, the two officers, escorted by SK, walked the short distance and climbed up to the first floor flat.
SK had quietly fixed up a photographer friend who, as per the script, “casually’’ dropped in during the tea. SK expressed “surprise’’ at his cameraman friend’s “unexpected’’ arrival.
As planned, he told him, “Now that you happen to be here why not take our photograph?’’
“Sure’’, replied the cameraman as he readied for the job.
SK and the unsuspecting officers got up for the photo op. Tall SK stood in the middle flanked by the two officers. The moment the photographer said, “Ready’’, SK quickly placed his arms on the shoulders of the DRM and the DCM, catching them unawares and perhaps much to their dislike. However, by then the game was over.
The first thing SK did the next day was to get a big sized photo of the group framed which adorned his living room prominently. Later, he called a couple of transfer-seekers to his place to discuss if he could help them out.
The group photo on the wall startled the visiting railway employees beyond their imagination. They were happy to have come to the “right person’’ who was “so pally’’ with the railway division’s top bosses.
The news spread like wild fire among the scores of employees who came from far and near to Lucknow and thronged the DRM office’s vast premises every day with their problems.
SK became their “hope and saviour’’. Several of them visited his flat to manage the transfer/posting of their choice, which they never got. However, in the process they became poorer by a few hundred rupees which was quite a significant amount those days.
The money, collected avowedly for the helpful staff, was never given to anybody. However, what SK gave was bad name to two high ranking innocent officials who were not aware of what was happening behind their back.
The obnoxious game continued for a pretty long time. Every time a new incumbent came, the same exercise was repeated. A new group picture was placed in the old photo frame.
As all this was happening within the four walls of the flat, the outside world was unaware of it. However, the behind-the-scene goings leaked out to a few journalists who “dropped in’’, giving SK, an “unpleasant surprise’’.
Nevertheless, the lucrative practice continued even after SK’s organisation was locked out, for neither the railway officers nor their group photos were in any way affected by the closure of SK’s journal. It was his “friendship’’ that mattered.
That was how a photo frame proved to be a hen that laid the proverbial golden eggs.
Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.
