Cheats, frauds and extortionists galore
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Maswood Alam Khan
THE first lesson a cheat in the making religiously follows is the art and dexterity of winning people's confidence. A seasoned swindler before defrauding a victim first sorts through his or her penchants and presents himself as a connoisseur of money, music, woman, wine, art, or politics whatever he senses his target prey would love to indulge in.
A fraud paradoxically does not chase an honest man who is not greedy or who does not indulge in what he himself cannot afford. A fraud always looks around in quest of the greedy. Because the greedy are curiously eager to profit from easy and quick means only to get trapped by a smart cheater at the end of the day.
A shrewd fraud will never defraud you on the very first moment or the very first day he encounters you. Even a pickpocket rations his very precious and fleeting moments to watch out before he swoops on. One who loses his composure and can't control his immediate desire usually gets caught during his defrauding operation.
A veteran fraud with his view set on a long-term goal will rather sacrifice his money and time for winning your heart and soul; he will wait till you are enamoured with him and he would hit you the moment his scheme reaches the perfect maturity for a masterstroke.
One turns into an extortionist after he is graduated from being an experienced operative in cheating or defrauding business. The graduated extortionist will never embark upon a risky undertaking like 'demanding tolls from moneyed men at gunpoint' unless he receives confirmation that law-enforcing agencies would be there to guard him during and after the extortion operation. In case law-enforcing agencies cannot be influenced or bribed, the extortionist needs auxiliary support of a gang of cohorts who must be equipped with tools that can overpower the defence mechanisms of the victims and the law-enforcing bodies meant to protect them.
Conventional wisdom assumes that people cheat based on whether they think they will get caught and the level of punishment they will receive. But there has been a 'complete role reversal' where fears are replaced by a sense of prestige a cheat or a bribe-taker enjoys by flaunting their ill-gotten fortunes. People in general salute a dishonest and powerful functionary more frequently than they salute an honest and humble functionary. Honest people are on the minority side of the fence dividing our society into a rich class with ill-gotten fortunes and a poor class eking out a living by honest means. More alarming is the trend that even some religious people who fear God are now trying to validate their bad earnings by some sorts of weird and self-analysed logics.
On the eve of festivities like Eid people become desperate to earn an extra income to please their families with gifts on the day of celebration. Frauds and extortionists are also people; they also have a family who also would like to smile on the day of celebration. No wonder frauds and extortionists become hyperactive before Eid to earn an extra income to share with their parents, their children and their wives.
Of late, cheats and extortionists have become so desperate that it is unsafe to get out of homes for shopping essentials in a market or for visiting patients in a hospital. Law enforcing agencies are at times stunned by the great number of groups of criminals let loose on a spree to make money in whatever way possible: picking pockets on a busy street, demanding tolls from a jewellery shop-owner, pressing public authorities to meet an unlawful demand or shooting blank shots in the air as a warning that the bullets next time will be shot at a human body, not in the air, if demands of tolls are not met instantly.
The pickpockets who are on the streets, the middlemen who are in the office corridors, and the extortionists who roam around on motorcycles are visible and the stories on their successful and foiled missions are splashed and aired as breaking news in press and electronic media. But the white-collared bureaucrat who procrastinates in making a decision or puts a file on a circuitous and vicious cycle on the pretext of an avoidable enquiry with a view to luring the beneficiary to grease his hands remains invisible and untouchable; the stories of his heinous missions remain unheard because the insiders themselves are his collaborators or are too timid to blow their whistles in public.
We understand cheating is bad, but we don't understand where it is really coming from and how we can reduce it. During the month of Ramzan almost 90 per cent Muslims in our country do their fasting and a great majority of them perform their religious activities as impeccably as possible. The same fasting people don't miss an opportunity to cheat.
A fasting Muslim can easily take a glass of water discreetly without letting anybody watch it. But he or she doesn't. Then why the majority of the same Muslims who are God fearing take bribe surreptitiously? Why do they try to interpret bribe in kind not a sin as compared to bribe in cash? When we take a pencil, for example from work, why do we say this is something everybody does? Even worse, we try to validate this stealing saying that taking a pencil out from our workplace is good for work because we can work home!
With my decades of experience as a banker and as a keen onlooker of events I am a living witness of many frauds and fraudulent attempts, big and petty, committed by both the bankers and the clients. I had also to watch silently and helplessly the strange and weird ways of how a fraud caught red-handed contrived to emerge unscathed from the trials and how 'offensive defence' as a tool could turn an innocent into a criminal and a criminal an innocent. More interesting is the finesse a white-collared functionary delicately applies in dealing with a situation to earn and launder his or her ill-gotten fortunes.
I have a plan, after I retire at the end of this year, to write a series of real stories on blackmail, bribery and forgery based on what I have closely witnessed big and small fishes committing in their offices fearlessly and fattening their wallets relentlessly.
The writer is a banker. He can be reached at e-mail:
maswood@hotmail.com
THE first lesson a cheat in the making religiously follows is the art and dexterity of winning people's confidence. A seasoned swindler before defrauding a victim first sorts through his or her penchants and presents himself as a connoisseur of money, music, woman, wine, art, or politics whatever he senses his target prey would love to indulge in.
A fraud paradoxically does not chase an honest man who is not greedy or who does not indulge in what he himself cannot afford. A fraud always looks around in quest of the greedy. Because the greedy are curiously eager to profit from easy and quick means only to get trapped by a smart cheater at the end of the day.
A shrewd fraud will never defraud you on the very first moment or the very first day he encounters you. Even a pickpocket rations his very precious and fleeting moments to watch out before he swoops on. One who loses his composure and can't control his immediate desire usually gets caught during his defrauding operation.
A veteran fraud with his view set on a long-term goal will rather sacrifice his money and time for winning your heart and soul; he will wait till you are enamoured with him and he would hit you the moment his scheme reaches the perfect maturity for a masterstroke.
One turns into an extortionist after he is graduated from being an experienced operative in cheating or defrauding business. The graduated extortionist will never embark upon a risky undertaking like 'demanding tolls from moneyed men at gunpoint' unless he receives confirmation that law-enforcing agencies would be there to guard him during and after the extortion operation. In case law-enforcing agencies cannot be influenced or bribed, the extortionist needs auxiliary support of a gang of cohorts who must be equipped with tools that can overpower the defence mechanisms of the victims and the law-enforcing bodies meant to protect them.
Conventional wisdom assumes that people cheat based on whether they think they will get caught and the level of punishment they will receive. But there has been a 'complete role reversal' where fears are replaced by a sense of prestige a cheat or a bribe-taker enjoys by flaunting their ill-gotten fortunes. People in general salute a dishonest and powerful functionary more frequently than they salute an honest and humble functionary. Honest people are on the minority side of the fence dividing our society into a rich class with ill-gotten fortunes and a poor class eking out a living by honest means. More alarming is the trend that even some religious people who fear God are now trying to validate their bad earnings by some sorts of weird and self-analysed logics.
On the eve of festivities like Eid people become desperate to earn an extra income to please their families with gifts on the day of celebration. Frauds and extortionists are also people; they also have a family who also would like to smile on the day of celebration. No wonder frauds and extortionists become hyperactive before Eid to earn an extra income to share with their parents, their children and their wives.
Of late, cheats and extortionists have become so desperate that it is unsafe to get out of homes for shopping essentials in a market or for visiting patients in a hospital. Law enforcing agencies are at times stunned by the great number of groups of criminals let loose on a spree to make money in whatever way possible: picking pockets on a busy street, demanding tolls from a jewellery shop-owner, pressing public authorities to meet an unlawful demand or shooting blank shots in the air as a warning that the bullets next time will be shot at a human body, not in the air, if demands of tolls are not met instantly.
The pickpockets who are on the streets, the middlemen who are in the office corridors, and the extortionists who roam around on motorcycles are visible and the stories on their successful and foiled missions are splashed and aired as breaking news in press and electronic media. But the white-collared bureaucrat who procrastinates in making a decision or puts a file on a circuitous and vicious cycle on the pretext of an avoidable enquiry with a view to luring the beneficiary to grease his hands remains invisible and untouchable; the stories of his heinous missions remain unheard because the insiders themselves are his collaborators or are too timid to blow their whistles in public.
We understand cheating is bad, but we don't understand where it is really coming from and how we can reduce it. During the month of Ramzan almost 90 per cent Muslims in our country do their fasting and a great majority of them perform their religious activities as impeccably as possible. The same fasting people don't miss an opportunity to cheat.
A fasting Muslim can easily take a glass of water discreetly without letting anybody watch it. But he or she doesn't. Then why the majority of the same Muslims who are God fearing take bribe surreptitiously? Why do they try to interpret bribe in kind not a sin as compared to bribe in cash? When we take a pencil, for example from work, why do we say this is something everybody does? Even worse, we try to validate this stealing saying that taking a pencil out from our workplace is good for work because we can work home!
With my decades of experience as a banker and as a keen onlooker of events I am a living witness of many frauds and fraudulent attempts, big and petty, committed by both the bankers and the clients. I had also to watch silently and helplessly the strange and weird ways of how a fraud caught red-handed contrived to emerge unscathed from the trials and how 'offensive defence' as a tool could turn an innocent into a criminal and a criminal an innocent. More interesting is the finesse a white-collared functionary delicately applies in dealing with a situation to earn and launder his or her ill-gotten fortunes.
I have a plan, after I retire at the end of this year, to write a series of real stories on blackmail, bribery and forgery based on what I have closely witnessed big and small fishes committing in their offices fearlessly and fattening their wallets relentlessly.
The writer is a banker. He can be reached at e-mail:
maswood@hotmail.com