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This guys falls in the latter category. His name is Mr Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava, infamously known as Mr Natwarlal. Once you read about him you will never forget him.
Here are ten supercool facts about the guy who is forever known as the Conman of India:
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He realised that he had the skills to replicate signatures inch perfect. In a world without pin numbers and passwords, signatures surely did the trick. His first major crime was forging signatures to steal Rs 1000.
2. He was at times the president, at times a business magnate
He was a master of disguise and had over 50 different aliases. He had even forged the signatures of Dr Rajendra Prasad and Dhirubhai Ambani.
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He used to pose as a government official and dupe foreign tourists by selling them famous Indian monuments. He is known to have repeatedly sold the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort and even the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
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Long before Anna Hazare and Kejru said that Sab bike hue hainji; this guy actually did it!! He once sold the parliament house to a foreigners and he MPs were included in the deal.
5. He was sentenced with over 113 years of jailtime, he barely served 20
He was arrested various times and tried. In the state of Bihar, he faces 14 convictions totalling sentences running up to over 113 years. He never served a complete sentence and always broke out. In total he must have hardly spent 20 years in prison.
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He was lastly officially spotted at the New Delhi Railway station on June 4 1996 while he was being transported from prison in Kanpur to the AIIMS hospital for treatment. He vanished from the wheelchair at the age of 84.
7. He even duped us in death
While his brother claimed that he had buried Natwarlal in 1996, the conman's lawyer says he was alive till 2009. i.e. Natwalal could have very well been alive till the age of 97.
8. He was a robinhood for his village
When he was not in hiding or running from police, he would spend time in his village and give away his loot to the needy.
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"In 1992, Natwarlal visited Siwan town and I tried to see him, but could not because of the huge crowd," one of his villagers had revealed his grief in 2011. They were also planning to install his statue in the town.
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10. Many movies were inspired by him
Big B played Natwarlal at the hilt of his own career in the 1979 film Mr Natwarlal. Many movies were made using tales of his adventures and even today people do mention him to compare fraudsters. And Emraan Hashmi did the last Bollywood movie inspire by him.