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Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What sharing my Lonnie Unices wouldn't be clear with the plural beef with you know, would have I have. I'm trying to figure out what the plural would be. Would it be Shereen Solana? Unis like attorneys general. I think the last name is Yuni Yuni. Yeah, shereen's wanna Unai sharina's. I mean, I I accept it. I was literally reading we gonna call you, Sharena says. From now on, I'm just letting you know I love it. So Grant Taylor and Middle School coined the nickname Shirini Weenie. I've embraced what was what was his name? Sharif. Grant Taylor. Ohh they're gonna say Brent Taylor, who's the chubbiest cop in Portland, OHSU, who got removed from the riot team for shooting too many people with grenades for no reason. Ohh. Jesus. I'm gonna say sharing. That would have been amazing. Not a creative like insult. Nickname that person. Right, right, right is beneath you. Yeah, that person's trash. Unless you know who is also kind. Well, I don't know. We'll decide if he's trash. You're probably gonna like this guy too. But we're gonna talk about a very special con artist today, a fellow named Natwarlal who was India's greatest con man. Now, I wanna start this by saying I can't tell you how accurate most of this is. There are very few English language sources. In his life, and I couldn't even find a lot of online, like, Hindi sources that I could translate. There's very little about this guy that is credible. There's a couple of, like, India Today, a couple, like, broadly credible websites that have stories about him on there. But like, **** it is hard to find **** about this dude that is not like some weird little listicle or basically there was a Bollywood movie made about his life that is completely inaccurate. Hard to tell what is true about this guy, but it's a fun story. So we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna. I did the best job I could and we're going to, it seems like. Through fee with some con artists, right? Like, right, it's you don't know what's true. If you are someone who spends in this guy's case, like literally like 60 straight years lying to people and conning people, it's gonna be hard to tell at what was true about your life. You're gonna have very little in the way of heart details. But what we have about this dude is fascinating and it's gonna be a fun, short little story. So. Mithilesh Kumar Shrivastava Shrivastava was born in the village of Bangra in a place called Bihar, India at some point in between 1912 and 1925, which is a pretty wide margin to not know exactly when this guy was born. It is one of those things. He's, he's he grows up in a small village in India in the like more than a century ago and like to this day. So there's this thing, this big celebration they do every 12 years, called the kummeli mean, they do it every four years, but every 12 years it's in Allahabad, and every time it's in Allahabad. It's like the largest gathering of human beings for any purpose in human history. Like, 120 million people came at the last Mela in Allahabad, which I was at when I was there was about 30 or 40 million people at a time in a tent city like it's it's incredibly. It's just this unbelievably massive thing. Sorry, am I dumb? What is it? What is, what is it for? It's it's a it's a religious celebration, OK? It's a, it's a, it's a Hindu religious celebration, OK? And it's so many people go that every year about 30,000 or so people disappear. And when I say disappear, I mean, these are people who live in villages so isolated and so small that they don't have government documents like they they they their only identity is as a part of this village, and they get separated from their people and they're just like people without. Like a legal act like that still happens in India. That's why this guy part of why this guy's like this, like, we don't have, like, government documents about this dude's early life, right? Like he's born in 1912 and some or or 1925 sometime in between there and some little village. We have very little about his actual early life, about his, like, government identity or whatever, which is part of what enables him to do the conning he does right. Things are very chaotic in India during the period where he's growing up. This is like he kind of comes into his early adulthood during the period where, like the British government. Gives up controlling India. So like this this guy. Part of why he's able to get away with so much is he. He lives during a very chaotic time in India. And as a result, we know very little about his early childhood. 1 version of his story states that the inciting incident that kind of led to his break from mainstream society occurred in 1932 when he was a 9th grader at Patna High School. Shrivastava was not a good student, particularly when it came to mathematics. His teachers noted to his parents that he was extremely intelligent, which led Srivastava's father to the conclusion that his son was simply refusing to work hard lectures from his dad turned into yelling and eventually to physical abuse, the first time srivastava's. Father hit him was also the last. Shrivastava fled home the very next day, eventually resurfacing in the nearby city of Calcutta. This one version of his story, and it is the version that paints the most sympathetic picture of young Shrivastava. Another version of the story states that, as a preteen, he realized he had the ability to almost perfectly forge the signature of any person he chose. One day, a family friend asked him to deposit some money in a nearby bank. Sharie copied their signature and later used it to withdraw ₹1000 from their account. According to this version of events, Chreese crime was found out and he was exiled from his village and forced to flee his home. At any rate, by the time he was in his late teens he was a lone and unsupported in Calcutta. So we don't know exactly how he gets there. This kind of two versions of the story. One is his dad beats him and he flees. That's obviously the more sympathetic one is he steals from a family friend and he gets kicked out of the village. Don't really know which one is true. I mean, either one, I I feel like I I don't hate. Like, it's not like, yeah, one is more like he's a victim, but the other one, he's desperate. And also, yeah, you know, like, who cares? Yeah, I mean it. It's they're both good con artist origin stories, right? Sure. Yeah. So, uh, at that time, Calcutta was the capital of the British Raj, and it was a city defined by its almost unbelievable gap between the colonial rich they're fortunate chosen Indian allies and employees, and a seething mass of starving urban poor. It's not for nothing. This is where Mother Teresa has her like her set up. And obviously she's a problematic figure. But she's there because there's so much poverty in Calcutta. Few cities in history have been harder places for a young pubescent boy with no money to survive. And yet, somehow, Srivastava. Managed. He enrolled in a bachelor in Commerce degree graduate course at Calcutta University, presumably after lying about his age. We don't know how he supported himself. He had no relatives in the city. But somehow he got by long enough to meet and befriend a businessman. Seth Keshav Ram, who became his first mark. Seth was in the market for a private tutor for his children. Shrivastava knew he could do the job. He just needed to convince Seth of that. So he produced a series of testimonials from satisfied parents by forging. Signatures and different handwriting styles to make them look like genuine notes from actual people who actually existed. Seth was duly impressed by how highly recommended this young man was and he hired Shrivastava to teach his son and daughter for ₹30 per month. Shrivastava did this job for several months, teaching this rich man's children. God only knows what because he did not have much of an education himself. After he'd been on the job a while, Shree asked Seth for a loan so he could purchase some books. Seth said no. Depending on who you believe, this was the inciting incident. That really. Earned 3 against all rich people. He quit his job and discussed and he's set to work getting revenge. First he forged another set of fake credentials and used them to get a job as the headmaster of a school that sets kids attended. Seth was impressed when Srivastava got hired. He apologized to his former employee and hired him back as a private tutor for much more money. Shree took the job but he had not yet gotten his revenge. At the time in Calcutta, there was a serious shortage of high quality cloth. Shree told Seth that he had a relative who just come from Bombay with 200 bales of cloth that he wanted to sell on the black market. For the low, low price of 4.5 lock of rupees, or $450,000, the cloth could be sets. A lock is like an Indian unit of measurement. That means like 100,000 or so. How do you spell LAKH? Yeah? So there's this cloth shortage, and Shree is like, hey, I got my guy coming in. He's got a bunch of this cloth. He's gonna sell it to you for ₹450,000, which is cheap, and you could sell the cloth back for much more money. Being a businessman, Seth couldn't pass up the opportunity to make some black market bucks. And now that Srivastava had proven himself legitimate, Seth was willing to trust the man with hundreds of thousands of rupees where he'd once been unwilling to trust him with hundreds. So he agreed to the deal. Once he did, Shrivastava informed him that the situation had changed. His relative had returned to Bombay but has set if Seth would send the cash to that city, he Shrivastava would personally guarantee the delivery of the balls to Calcutta. Seth was willing to do this, but he insisted Shrivastava would have to go to Bombay with the money and one of sets agents in order to make sure the deal went through properly. Shree agreed. And he travelled to Bombay with Seth Mann. And I'm going to quote from a write up in India Today. Here on the journey, Srivastava had cleverly, though casually. Regale the agent with stories of Bombay's tough police force and the ruthless elements in the underworld who had no compunctions about dispatching any outsider who dared to poach on their preserves. Understandably nervous, the agent begged Shrivastava to leave him behind and take the money himself to purchase the cloth. Shrivastava agreed and departed with the the ₹450,000. He never returned. Instead, he arrived in Patna a few days later and proudly handed his father ₹100,000 as a gift. He told his father that he had become a major shareholder in a big company in Calcutta. Shrivastava returned to Calcutta the same week but Seth had heard of his arrival and sent hired thugs to retrieve the money. Shrivastava spun them a *** story about being chased by the police and having to abandon the money. But Seth was unconvinced. He gave Srivastava 4 days in which to find the money, failing which he threatened to have him murdered. The moment Seth left, Shrivastava rushed to the police station where he lodged a complaint against Seth, alleging Seth had threatened his life for refusing to become his agent for black market deals. Shrivastava also gave the police a detailed count of Seth's clandestine. Criminal deals, so wow. Steals half ₹1,000,000 from this guy and then turns him into the police when he threatens to murder him. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what you do, bro. Yeah, that's what he did. It's also like, who you gonna trust, right? Like the this foreigner, you know? Yeah, I mean, they're both. I think it's one of those things this doesn't wind up working out for him. So snitching worked at first, because Seth and his goons get immediately arrested by the police and taken into custody. And since Seth was not a really nice guy, his men have no loyalty to him, so they immediately confessed to planning a murder. So now Seth is ****** no matter what because he's just been caught attempting to murder somebody and he decides to at least take Shree down with him. And he tells the police that she had been trying to set up an illegal black market cloth deal. So the cops arrest Shree too. And in December 11th, 1937, he goes to jail for the first time. Yeah. You know, that's how this starts, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. You go to the cops. That's what happens, right? So he gets sentenced to A6 month imprisonment. Young and at that point, not. Savvy as he would later be, three served out his whole sentence. He was released and immediately committed more fraud. We don't know the precise nature of this crime, but given the stories it's gone so far, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to guess what kind of **** he got up to. He gets caught a second time almost immediately in a sentence to 8 more months of hard labor. He serves his time again and he decides after two sentences behind bars, it's time for him to move his base of operations away from Calcutta. They know him too well there, so he moves to Madras and he changes his name to Natwarlal. The name under which you would become one of the most famous people in modern Indian history. Now the Madras police record just one crime by Natwarlal in their files, another suspected fraud. The fact that they only caught him once suggested that he'd gotten savvier after his second arrest. Because if we know one thing about natwarlal at this point in the story, it's that he cannot stop himself from conning people. By 1939, he had returned to northern India and for several years he roams from city to city, conning businessmen out of there. Also ill gotten gains. None of his subsequent grifts were as ambitious as his theft from Seth. He steals $20,000 rupee from a con and. Karabal bad, $40,000 from Akhan in Azamgarh. The cases are individually smaller, but there's a ton of them. He's just constantly scam, scamming 10s of thousands of rupees out of people. And it's more than the law can keep up with. Not more. Like, what kind of people is he scamming businessmen? It's it's always like, hey, I've got some sort of a deal. I've got this black market deal. You give me the cash, I'll get this thing, I'll get this thing. Then he skips town. You know, that's the way this guy works. And again, it's the same kind of thing as Victor Lustig, where a lot of it's like, I don't want you to go to the cops, so I'll make sure you're agreeing to break the law. Exactly. Yeah. He wants to compromise them. So they don't. Yeah. They can't ever turn them in. Hmm. So Sardar, he he's very fast. He's constantly skipping cities. Isn't like dozens of cities at this point scamming people. Mm-hmm. So the cops are always a few steps behind him. But he leaves enough of a pattern that at least one detective becomes obsessed with him. This guy, Sardar Hari Singh, who's the inspector of police in the city called Lucknow, like, just becomes very dedicated to capturing this guy. He's probably the first person to report. From the budding con man's IMO in a concerted way, and I'm gonna quote from India Today again. His initial operations involve the swindling of goods from jewelry stores in large department stores in the cities he visited. He would first open a bank account in a large bank. He would then win the confidence of the shopkeepers by paying for his purchases by checks which were promptly cashed. Once he had earned their trust, natwarlal would withdraw his bank account and on the same day by large amounts of jewelry and expensive items from the stores which he could sell later. He was careful, though to limit his purchases to a few 1000. Rupees so as to combat any suspicion that might arise. He would then disappear from the city and another page would be added to the Natwarlal legend. Hmm. So pretty not super ambitious cons here, but very smart, you know, he's yeah, it's the same thing. You establish a baseline of trust, you get them to think that your money is good, and then you steal, right? Yeah, that's how it works. So he keeps this up for half a decade and in 19 until in 1944, he is arrested for more fraud, this time in a city. Called gorakhpur. Now we don't know how he gets out, but this arrest marks the first time that he busts himself out of prison. And it's not gonna be his last. He's rearrested at a megabat in 1945 and released on bail this time. And then he's rearrested in Varanasi a few weeks later in connection to a series of forged receipts issued at a railway station. This con represented an evolution for natwarlal. See, the idea was that he would book railway wagons posing as a businessman who needed to transport sugar or some other commodity. He would actually pay the train company the absolute minimum he could for the smallest amount of space he could book in their freight section. Then he would doctor the receipt that he'd given them and make it look like he had rented much more space on the train so that it would be able to claim that he had a lot more sugar or whatever than he actually had. Then he would travel ahead to the destination city of the train and he would sell the cargo to speculators there. So he actually books a tiny amount of space on the train. He makes it look like he's booked a lot. He's like, I've got all this sugar coming in, you wanna buy it, you give me the money. Here's the slit. The train's gonna arrive in another day. He would show them the fake receipts as proof that he had the goods, and when they paid him, he would take the money and run. And when the fires arrived at the train station to pick up their commodities, they'd find only a few bags of sand and bricks. So he's he's he's gotten a lot more ambitious here. He's diversified, as all con men need to do, and natwarlal had a few different schemes that had to. He had to run a bunch of different scams in any given time to stay solvent, because all of these cons require that you have up front money in order to make more money later. One of his scams was to open multiple bank accounts in a city under the name of a fake company. He would lease office space, purchase expensive looking furniture, and hire attractive secretaries to staff it. He would then befriend several bank managers in the city and wine and dine them, making sure to show off both his offices and his sexy employees. Once they trusted him and believed his business was genuine, he would request to be able to make a large overdraft. So they basically like, hey, I don't have the money. Now I need you guys to give me a loan and it it'll like you. You've seen how successful my businesses. I'll have the cash for you. And the bankers would always say yes, they would allow him to withdraw huge sums of money on credit. And once he had the, because he's done business with them before he sets up accounts, he puts money in their banks. It makes it look like it's a real business. He wines and dines them. You get their trust. He gives the notice with the, like, the same receipts. Like you give them a little and then you take a look. Yeah, he has the basic amount of credibility to get away with the drift. OK. And it's the same thing. Way Trump works, right? Trump is is like always like $700 million or something, right? Because rich guys trust other rich guys and that's the way being rich. Works. You don't put your own money up for risk. You get the bank's money and like, yeah, so. But he just takes the money and runs, and he abandons the city, his employees, and whatever office he'd rented in the process. He was caught for one of these schemes in 1953. The Punjab National Bank is the bank that he conned. In that instance, he was arrested, but he escaped custody. He was later locked up in Delhi for the same crime but disappeared mysteriously. Again. Details are thin on a lot of his escapes, but it's generally accepted that he would just bribe the **** out of all of his guards. He continued in this vein for more than a decade, carrying out countless countless cons in more cities than most people ever visit in their lifetimes. He was arrested again in March of 1956 in the city of Meerut, and once the cops who caught him realized who they had, they started reaching out to other police agencies across India. After a few days of phone calls, they realized the man in their charge was wanted by no fewer than 35 police departments in different cities for different schemes. So. This is his first big bust and he serves 10 months in prison in Meerut before being transferred to Lucknow to begin serving time for his crimes in that city. Wait, so ten months? And then what was the rest of the sentence? I think he's got like another year or something that he's gotta do, but he doesn't do that year. So he gets transferred to Lucknow and one of the cops started out saying the detective was obsessed with him. Works in Lucknow and he gets to know this guy he's been following during the time when Natwarlal is in jail there. And Sardar claims that Natwarlal immediately established himself as a kingpin in the jail. He kept access somehow to a huge amount of grifted cash, and he was able to hire a special cook who made him all of his meals, so he has his own. Private chef in prison. Yeah, I respect that. Yeah, that's a flex. That's a solid flick. Yeah, Robert, you know what else is a solid flex? Uh. That was beautiful, that the R9X knife missile. So me and my heart melted. I did. That is your screen. Yeah. Well, check out these products and services that probably won't go to jail. In India. 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With me, everything is just easier. And getting it done was easy too. You know, I went in, I had my consultation, they told me I was a good candidate and then I went back in couple of days later about it being about a boom. You know, my eyes were perfect. So LASIK Plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States. They have over 20 years in the industry and more than two million treatments performed. If you want to start your LASIK plus journey, you can get $1000 off when treated in September. That's 500 per eye. So visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free. Consultation now. Ah, we're back. So natwarlal's in jail. He's a kingpin there. He's got a special cook. He's he convinces his guards to give him the right to move freely anywhere in the jail he wants to go. Bottles of liquor were noted to appear appear mysteriously at his dining table in the private cell that the guards had issued him, and his guards refer to him by his first name, because he is paying all of them very well. But how taking you have access to all this gifted money. I mean, he's, you know, he's got a ******** of half of his schemes involved creating a ton of bank. Accounts. He has actual bank accounts for his money. You know, they got people, but they are on the outside. He's a good scammer. That's how you do it. Taking advantage of his privileged position in the jail, natwarlal hatched a scheme to escape in February of 1957. He managed to steal an inspectors uniform and literally walk out the front door of the jail. Guards saluted him on the way out. He disappeared, escaping the city and somehow travelling to Allahabad, where he checked into a hotel and then opened an account in a local bank with ₹1000 he'd gotten from some forgotten con once he had a bank account that Whirlow forged demand draft letter and used it to withdraw ₹20,000 he'd never actually had. By the early 1970s, the list of criminal cases tied to Natwarlal had had risen to nearly 200. He was caught again in the city of Kakinada and jailed in 1975. Now, Warlow offered the guard, keeping him locked in a ₹10,000 to help him escape. The guard agreed, but when he opened the bundle of cash he'd been given after letting that wall escape, he realized that only the bills and the outside of the packet were real, and the rest were blank paper. Well, yeah, he's he's he's he's a slick guy. Yeah. In 1980, Natwarlal was arrested yet again in Bombay. He was jailed and immediately started complaining that he was ill he was taken to the hospital, where he was treated for a kidney disorder and the urethral problem. After two weeks in the hospital, he left at midnight with a single police constable. Somewhere along the way he escaped again, probably via bribery. Now there are rumors that Warlow was something of a Robin Hood figure in his native village of Bahar, their stories of him bestowing fortunes on poor people and over the years Mystique formed around him, helped by the fact that he seemed to only con the wealthy and powerful. Now, while all is said to have once hosted a feast for everyone in his hometown of Bangra, funded it by his pillages and then handed ₹10,000 to each poor villager and disappeared into the night before the cops could catch him. It's impossible to save. This is true. Again. There's a lot of similar stories about, like my cousin pretty boy Floyd, that he would, while he was on the run, wind up at some poor old ladies farmhouse. And she would feed him and put him up for the night. And in the morning she would wake up, he'd be gone and there'd be like $100 bill under his plate or something. And that's probably true. But you just said pretty boy Floyd, and that was. That was his name. Yeah. OK, cool. It's one of the great bank robbers of the gangster era. And also related to Robert. Yeah. Yeah. But you said it's just like my cousin. Pretty wonderful. My. Grandma, great grandma that he was a cousin whose last name was Barnes. But what do you think your name is? But what do you think pretty boy Floyd calls you? I have one good story about him, which is that when I was in AP English and I think 11th grade, we were doing The Great Gatsby. And so we had like a unit on like the 30s, the gangster era, right 30s. And I mentioned that she likes asked if anyone knew any famous gangsters other than like Al Capone and they mentioned pretty Boy Floyd. She's like, how do you know about him? Was like, well, he's my cousin and she's like. Really? He shot my grandpa in the leg during a bank robbery. Holy ****. And I was like. Oh, God, I I'm. I'm so sorry. She's like, Oh no, don't be. He's told him not to move, and my grandpa moved, so he shot him in the leg. She was like, he deserved it. He called. Yeah. I mean, it was a bank robbery, you know? It was an insured bank. Well, machete man, Robert, you can continue now. OK. So, yeah. Again, there's a lot of stories about con men and gangsters and stuff about how how generous they would be, a lot of these Robin Hood stories, and a lot of them are true in that they did bribe poor people because, number one, it's cheap. By poor people and #2. It's smart because poor people can hide your ***. You know, if you're gonna be going to ground a lot, if you're gonna have the cops always looking after you, you want little people with farms and like slums and stuff to want to hide your *** you know? So again. I'm sure not. Warlow did have some Robin Hood ****. I'm sure it was also mainly so that he didn't get caught, you know, like that was why you serving. It was, it's generally pretty self-serve symbiotic relationship. Like they they liked him because he would seem to be against the man. Yeah, and he likes them because it's really easy to bribe poor people. Yeah, like ₹100 is not a ton of money. So whatever the truth of why he was giving them cash, a lot of poor people in India believed him a hero. A statue was even erected in Bangra to honor him. I'm gonna quote from an article in the Times of India Crest Edition here. Trendy Chandra Bali Yadav, a native of bhangra and currently working in the Ministry of Commerce in New Delhi, is happy to learn of the development of the statute that they're building. He was a real hero, he says. He duped hundreds of people for scores of rupees, but he helped the poor and spent the entire money on them. It's a sentiment that finds an amazing echo. It's a matter of privilege for us that he was one of us, said Sue Tassano Kumar, who grew up on natwarlal stories. The legend, if anything, has only grown. Pamari Devi says that he has even helped people who have dropped in at world's name without really knowing him. Calling it often told incidents, she says. Once I was traveling in a train from Allahabad and the train police was after my life because I was traveling in an express train while I had a passenger train ticket. He rejected my pleas and was adamant that he would have to find or detain me. Then I told him, don't you know I belong to Natwarlal's village? Suddenly his demeanor changed and he said, oh, you hail from Natwarlal's village, then you can travel without a ticket. No problem. Wow. So who knows that's true? Like that's that's the like, this guy is is huge and at least certain parts of India. Like he is, he becomes a folk by by the 70s, he's a folk hero. Yeah, like he has like a reputation. People respect him, people respect him. They like him. Cops don't like him and cops are not happy when he gets a statue, right? People who aren't cops like him, people who aren't cops are rich. Like him a lot. By 1979, he was famous enough to have a major Bollywood production made about his life, a movie called Mr Natwarlal. And the movie bears only the vaguest resemblance to his actual life. It was basically in a complete work of fantasy. It was a huge hit and it cemented the con man's image in popular culture. And he is still conning in 1979, which is a great position to be in as a con man that, like, you're he's like a full, bonafide folk hero by this point in time. That's so funny that the movie was made and he was still doing it. Like, it's like exposing it. And then he's still going, yeah, still going. After breaking out of Kakinada jail in 1980, Natwarlal traveled to a different Indian city whose name I'm not even going to try to pronounce. Like I know my limits on this stuff. He adopted a new fake name, Lakshmi Narayan, and started pretending to be a businessman from Bombay. He found a new mark, a sugar dealer, and gradually befriended him. Once they established some trust Natwarlal put in an order for ₹82,000 worth of sugar. He asked it to be delivered to his address in Bombay and paid a ₹4000 deposit for the sugar. He promised to pay the rest upon delivery. It should be obvious at this point that he had no intention of paying his friend back. Instead, he traveled to Bombay and met a guy named Mohan Gurnani, president of the local sugar merchants. Association. He somehow managed to convince Mohan that he was a close friend of Mohan's recently deceased uncle. Now that they were buds, natwarlal told Mohan, hey, I got all this sugar for sale. You want it? Mohan said yes. So Natwarlal sold him the sugar and took a ₹60,000 advance. When the rest of the sugar arrived, he waved the remainder of the fee that he'd agreed upon, telling Mohan that they were gonna do more business together and he could just adjust the extra into that. Then he fled town and continued his conning career for four more years. Now, if you look up natwarlal online, you'll find that he is most famously referred to as the man who sold the Taj Mahal, which is why I'm putting him with listing in this because they both sold a bunch of a bunch of, like, he didn't just sell the Taj Mahal. I sold the Red Fort, which is this massive, beautiful building in Jaipur, and he sold the Indian House of Parliament. Wow. He's he he's very famous for this. And that is I wanted the Parliament looks pretty interesting to me. But yeah, they both sold these, like, world wonders. Yeah. It turns out to be a great con. And we will talk about how they did it. But first, you know what else is a great con, Shereen Raytheon, I was just gonna say capitalism in general. OK? ******* incredible con and ad breaks. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one meant mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. 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If you want to start your LASIK plus journey, you can get $1000 off when treated in September. That's 500 per eye. So visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free. Consultation now. We're back so. The story of how Natwarlal sold the Taj Mahal. So unfortunately for his wild as the story as this is, there's not a whole lot of hard details. It seems to have been this is a con he pulled off a ****. He's so we don't know how many times he sold the Taj Mahal. He did it regularly. This was like a thing that he would do. So he would, he would dress up as a government official and he would find wealthy foreign tourists on vacation going to, like, see the Taj Mahal. And he would have, like meals with them and launch into conversations with them. And then he would he would kind of do the Eiffel Tower thing. Like, yeah, it's pretty, but it's a ***** to upkeep. Very expensive keeping this Taj Mahal thing going. Like keeping the red Fort. You take so much money, we're kind of looking to offload it. You think it's pretty, right? You look like you got some money. Do you wanna, I mean, you know, we we could sell this to you if you're willing to, like, put down a down payment right now. Like, this could be yours. You could make all of this tourism money a little bit of upkeep and it'll be profitable again. Wow. And if this works a bunch, yeah, this works a bunch. And he also at some point sells the Indian House of Parliament. And most versions of the story say, say he sells it, complete with parliamentarians. I honestly have no idea what that could mean. Maybe. But like, yeah, it's one of those things. There's so many stories about this guy. He definitely conned some rich people into buying the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort and some other. I don't know about the the Parliament thing. There's just not enough details about it, or at least not that I can find in English. I mean, you gotta respect conning dumb rich people. It's it's beautiful. Yeah, it's dumb. Let's say you get a Bollywood movie made about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So depending on where you read about natwarlal, you'll either hear that he had 10 successful jailbreaks or the firing of things 60. In 1984 he was caught again, this time because he literally bumped into the director of police for the city of Endor at a A train station. He was arrested and charged for three pending cases in that city and sentenced to 26 years in prison. So he was supposed to be like this. The story of this escape is he was supposed to be transferred from Lucknow to the Old Delhi rail station. And there was a big crowd at the station because he's famous and they all want to see this famous con man get LED away to prison. So he's also kind of a sicker old man at this point. And he asks the soldier guarding him to get a medicine pill from like to go get like, like, I don't have any money. I need you to go to the pharmacy nearby and pick up some medicine because I'm like, I'm sick right now and I'll, I'll pay you guys back later. And the soldier goes to get the medicine, and a couple of cops stand there. Guard him while the soldiers gone. And then that Warlow asked one of the cops to go get water for him. And then while like, so eventually basically sends each of these guys away, one after the other, and then just like ******* runs off, goes into the crowd and escapes and all three of the policemen, it's probably he just bribes them again. Like none of the versions of this escape make much sense. I think he's paying these guys off. They all get fired is the money. Money talks again. Money talks. And I think that, yeah. And the con man walks and he walks again. He was finally caught for the last time in the mid 1990s, and he was well into his 80s. At this point he goes to trial and he's brought before a judge who clearly somewhat starstruck, asked him how he convinced so many successful people to part with their money. Now, while all replies, Your Honor, I charge a fee to teach people, give me ₹100 that I will be glad, happy to tell you the secret of how I caught. Wow. So the judge, the judge hands him the money and that we're all smiles and tells him that's how you do it. Oh my God. So beautiful. Loved comment. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody likes him, you know. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like baffled that after the movie came out, he was still able to calm people. Yeah. Because the movie didn't tell any of the his real cons like, Ohh but but but did it and he's good at this guy. He yeah, he he he had something like 60 different aliases. He's he's disguising himself and stuff. You usually find out later. I got, I got got by now, Warlow, you know? Right. And I don't, I don't know. Yeah. I I can't confirm that. The story with the judges, true. I found it on a blog, but it's clearly it's a story that I found on a couple of sketchy blogs. So it's a story people tell about him, you know, like, I don't know, he's a legend at this point. He's a he's a folk hero in India, you know, he's definitely a real guy, definitely conned people. Hard to say exactly what he did. He's like the asop. He's like the asop of of of Indian Khan. Yeah. He escaped for the last time in 1996 when he was being taken to the hospital again. He was wheelchair bound at this point and he wound up again at the Delhi train station, so he shouldn't have been able to escape. But he did, and I found a contemporary India Today article that explained in as much detail as I've been able to find how Natwarlal, 84, who had been brought up from Kanpur jail to the jet capitals All India Institute of Medical Sciences for a checkup, seized his chance when only the jail sweeper was left to guard him after the policeman went to deposit his wheelchair. He asked for tea and when the sweeper went to get a cup, he simply vanished. We don't know when Natwarlal died. His brother claims 1996. His lawyer claims 2009. He was 84 during his last prison escape. So he's certainly dead weight 8484. And he doesn't get caught again, so he dies a free man. You know? I respect that so much. You gotta respect the guy. I mean, little as we know about him. Yeah, old man. Yeah. And he ******* doesn't it. He still got it. I respect that. What a hero. You gotta respect natwarlal. At least based on, you know, in the end died a freeman problem. Honestly, the fact that we don't know for sure just yeah. Enhances the legendaries. Absolutely. Yeah. That you get two different people who should know the truth, telling different stories, right? Wow. Well, sheree. And that's the end of our quick little tale about natwarlal. How are you feeling? Thank you so much for yeah, that's a fun one. Last I gotta tell you, I said this last time. Last time, as far as like the the previous episode that we just did. But I'm it's it's very these ones were fun. You know, every time we do the show. Loki terrified. Because I don't want to sound dumb but also last time but no two times ago, it was it was a very intense time, but this was so fun. I almost wanna come back again. Well, next time it's gonna be like genocide or child molestation or child molesting. Genocide. Yrs. I I will promise you that. Alright. Friends and enemies. Three and working frenemies follow you on the interwebs, right? Well, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter if you'd like. My Instagram is Shiro hero SHEROAPRO. And then Twitter is sure Hero 666 and that person hasn't given up Shiro hero yet on Twitter. But also I kind of, I'm leaning into the 666. I like it. So yeah, yeah, it's it's it's on. Right now is the time, if there's any. Also buy strains of book of poetry. Poetry. I don't wanna support Amazon, so if you want a copy you can like bend, they'll do something and I can send you a PDF. But I'm working on another one right now. Hopefully I can publish it soon. Hopefully. Anyway. Thanks again. Bye bye. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. 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