Would you ever fall for a scheme that offers you to buy the Taj Mahal? While it may seem difficult to believe it today but just a few decades ago, there was a man who, with his clever shyster and sly ways, sold inconceivable dreams in the form of the Taj Mahal, and actually tricked people into believing him!
Meet India's most popular conman, Natwarlal, who even inspired a movie with the same name, starring Amitabh Bachchan. He stands out for his amusing ways and notoriousness in the history of Indian conmen.
Born as Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava in Bangra village of Siwan district, Bihar, Natwarlal was a lawyer by profession before he started duping people off their money. He was a clever impostor and used more than 50 aliases to dupe people. The master hoaxer even swindled prominent businessmen, including Tata, Birla, Mittal, and the Ambanis.
That's not all. He had mastered the art of forging signatures of famous personalities before he set his sight on selling historical landmarks of the country. To everyone's surprise, he successfully sold Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Rashtrapati Bhavan, and the Parliament House of India, along with its 545 sitting members!
Natwarlal's ways inspired many other notorious minds to target and dupe common people. As reported by the Hindustan Times, a 21-year-old posed as the director of Indraprastha Automobiles Pvt Ltd and fraudulently withdrew around Rs 19 lakh from the account.
