Dear fellow-fraud junkies, I’m back with your favorite weekly fix. This past week I’ve heard some mouth-watering fraud stories that I’ve been bursting to talk about. I just could not decide which ones should be covered here. There was some super stiff competition. But let me present the three winners for top fraudsters in India.

At number 3, we have a story on which a book was released last week called the Indian Punter’s League. The fact behind the fictional account is infinitely stranger and takes good old betting app fraud to a whole new level. Rural Indian police stumbled upon a band of thieves who were filming a live cricket match in a remote village. Turns out, the game was orchestrated to make it look like a live game being broadcast through a mobile app to gamblers in Russia. The unsuspecting Russian gambling enthusiasts thought that they were betting on a real IPL match watching this much staged game. The organizers were eventually arrested after the cops were done laughing their heads off.

Shortly behind is the runners-up. It came to light yesterday, what sounds like straight out of a Bollywood script, fraudsters in a western state of India, had been duping the government for over a year by installing a duplicate toll plaza. The toll plaza was built inside the premises of a closed down factory and the ‘operators’ were routing traffic out of the national highway to bypass the actual tolls. For redirecting traffic, they were even baiting the commuters with a deep discount on the official tolls. I’m reminded of that Govinda song “It happens only in India.”

And the prize goes to the one and only, let’s give it up ladies and gentlemen for the ultimate God (or let’s just say) godman of fraud. A Paraguayan official a week or so back, was replaced because of what? Because he signed a proclamation with a fictional country called United States of Kailasa. You read that right, fictional country. Its run by a fraud Indian fugitive godman Nithyananda. If people in the first world countries are thinking this is all very bizarre, then just hold on. There’s plenty more where that comes from. The city of Newark (and some 30 other US cities as per some reports) had once signed sister-city agreements with this imaginary nation. Big yikes!

Now this dude, if anyone cares to admit watching him on his channels, with his followers (and there’s a clown car full of them) dressed in an outlandish wardrobe that looks like part of a consignment rejected by Maganlal Dresswala & Co. in the 80’s. But let’s not underestimate them. Turns out his clowns represented the fake nation at a real UN convention in Geneva! The fictitious country also has a flag, an emblem, a constitution, and hold your breath, issues passports 😊 OK great, now that it’s established these guys have passports there, we should definitely fly this Unites States of Kailasa’s really talented diplomatic team back to India. With their skills, we may just have a permanent seat on the security council.