In 2007, when I was settled in Dubai, a friend of mine told me that he is arranging for a loan to start his new business of buying decommissioned ships to take apart and sell. I used to deal in metal scrap and I knew what such a business could cost just to get started (a startup capital of US$1 million was the minimum those days), and so I asked him where he is getting his capital. He replied that he has just scored because a friend has recently become a director in the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates and that he has been promised a loan through this friend. All he has to do is put up a ‘processing fee’ of merely 0.002% of the loan amount, half to be paid now and half once the loan is sanctioned. The loan was interest-free for the first 3 years, and then had to be repaid at a nominal rate of Libor+1% in the next 10 years. The collateral would be equity in his company, which he hastened to add, he’d be OK to lose should he default. This was a great opportunity, he told me excitedly, and he was inviting me to be part of it.
I knew that this is highly unusual, since that is not how banks function, but since I was aware of how differently things worked in the UAE and other GCC nations, and having had plenty of dealings with Arabs who did things their way, I gave him the benefit of doubt and asked him how much he is looking to raise. The answer threw me off: US$100 billion.
I sat my friend down and explained to him how silly this sounds, and that it is not just unlikely, but that he is probably being scammed (if this isn’t just a big misunderstanding). He insisted that he is right. This went on for many days, as I continued to dissuade him from trying to raise money (at this point, he was trying to raise US$2 million, no kidding) for the ‘processing fee’.
Eventually, he came one day, happy and exuberant that he had managed to put up his house, which he had bought after 22+ years of work in the Gulf and with a massive loan, which he paid off slowly and steadily from his high profile job (he worked at a health and beauty products company as their point man for EMEA: Europe, Middle East, and Africa), for a loan of US$750k. So, he was ‘only’ US$250k short, which he was raising from friends like me. Against that ‘short-term loan’, he was offering 5% of his US$100 billion I refused, of course, but he managed to talk some other friends on our poker circle into ‘investing’ into this ‘venture’. I stood by, trying to talk sense into them initially, and then just stepping back.
Many weeks passed, and since we met at least twice a week, once for a game of golf, and once on Friday nights for poker, I kept pressing him to tell me what happened to the ‘loan’. He kept dodging. Then, others started to ask what happened to their money. He confessed that while he had paid the US$1 million as advance, his friend has been ill for some time and hence, the whole process was stuck. Later, his friend’s mother was in hospital, and even later, his son who was studying in the USA needed to be visited, and then there was Ramadan, followed by the Eid vacation that his friend took to Europe, and so on, until it all started to come apart quite visibly.
Here’s the interesting part: The more others realised that he was duped off his money, the more he dug in. He said he knew this person from school (which school did the Arab Central Banker go to in Udupi was a question he could not answer), that he was related to him, that he has done this in the past, that he knew someone else who got US$100 billion, and so on. Indeed, the more it became clear that he was conned, the more firm his beliefs became, so much so that he started believing in the stories himself. One day, one of our mutual friends got so mad at him that they came to blows over money, and even when we separated them and tried to counsel this poor man who had so obviously been had, he stuck to his guns. He even promised 5% more out of his US$100 billion, but this time, no one was buying it.
Eventually, he lost his home, his marriage broke down, his job (which, it turned out, he was stealing from just to raise money for the ‘processing fee’) was lost, and he had a police case against him in the UAE, because of which he could not leave.
That, of course, is the way all these stories end.
Unfortunately, this one is no different, but with one exception: That man, who I am still in touch with, and who has since worked his ass off to pay off his creditors, and has once again established himself (this time in a West African country) with a new wife, new family, and a new job, which he is very diligent about, still, to this day, refuses to believe he was had.
Sadly, I have no disclaimer about a made-up story with characters that have nothing to do with anyone living or dead, and so on. So, there is no disclaimer like in films (or in Darshan Mondkar’s spot-on posts about topical issues). This, my friends, is a true story, down to the last detail.
The tragedy in this story is not just that the mark (the person who was defrauded) failed to see obvious tell-tale signs of a con being played on him, and that his fantastical wishful thinking tended to colour his logic with selection bias, where he picked & chose only those interpretations of the happenings and people in front of him that adhered to that wishful thinking, but that even after it was absolutely clear that he was fooled, he continued to defend his actions because he had painted himself into such a tight corner as to leave no room at all to manoeuvre, making it impossible for him to keep his money, friends, family, career, or even reputation intact. Indeed, in the bargain, he had become more loyal to the scamster than the scamster himself, to the point where even when he was looking ruin in the face, he refused to back down lest he let down the very person who was responsible for his complete and total ruin.
What is the relevance of this story here, you ask? Well, it is this: When I see the well-educated, well-read, well-travelled, well-off, the privileged, the more articulate, and normally sane people who started off with ‘The Congress had its chance. Now, let us give Modiji one,’ went about publicising his work through fake news and memes that showed Shanghai as Ahmedabad, or conferred some non-existent UNSECO prize onto their leader, or forwarded transparently made-up messages about how Pakistan or China was ‘taught a lesson’ or how finally the NASA is acknowledging Hindu rituals, and from then on, as more and more time passed and things became sufficiently apparent, have slowly but surely realised how close to ruin he has brought the very nation, the very Bharat Mata they purportedly love, still defending the indefensible because they are now so deeply invested into his lies that it has become the truth to them, becoming more loyal to Modi than Modi himself, I remember my erstwhile friend from Dubai. And I cry.
