Untold ’blade’ stories

Last week, another 'blade' company shut shop in Bangalore, leaving hundreds of its customers in shock.

Untold 'blade' stories

Last week, another 'blade' company shut shop in Bangalore, leaving hundreds of its customers in shock. Investors are slowly coming out and telling reporters how they were conned. As you might expect, they are furious. And embarrassed.

Frontier Group worked just like Vini Vinc, which promised a fantastic rate of interest on deposits. It played on the greed of ordinary people. Once its proprietor had amassed enough money, he fled. Vini Vinc was bad enough, and you would have thought Bangaloreans had learnt a lesson from that scandal. But no. Frontier proves that these schemes, like love stories, are eternal in their appeal.

The report concludes wryly that the man in question had to pay a heavy price to find love: Rs 8.5 lakh, to be precise.

Frontier's proprietor had reportedly hired pretty women to go out and find investors. A businessman on M G Road -- and we assume businessmen are not easy to fool -- admits he handed over Rs 6.5 lakh because the 'ever-smiling' executive Sanam came to his shop every now and then, and persuaded him sweetly to invest.

But such scams aren't new. Sir C V Raman, the celebrated scientist, had reportedly put his Nobel Prize money in the hands of a con artist, whose exploits later inspired R K Narayan's novel The Financial Expert.

Some two decades ago, I remember a company called S R Enterprises set up shop near Jayanagar. An entrepreneur called S Rajendiran, hailing from Coimbatore, offered a deal few could refuse. Make a deposit, wait for 30 days, and collect goods three times the worth of your deposit. If a fan cost Rs 300, all you had to do was hand him Rs 100. You could walk away with the fan 30 days later.

In the initial months, Rajendiran did hand over brand-new goodies to many depositors. Encouraged, some borrowed money from sharks to invest in his scheme. I had heard of a man who wanted to buy a lorry, and had deposited Rs 50,000 in the hope that he would drive home a new vehicle worth Rs 1.5 lakh soon. The clamour to put in money increased when Rajendiran said the 30-day period would end, and new customers would have to wait 51 days for the same benefits.

Like all great con artists, Rajendiran upped and left one day. When word got around, enraged depositors smashed open the door of his shop. They grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on, and ran home.

A man in our neighbourhood woke up to the bad news, and hurried in his lungi to Rajendiran's shop. He picked up a steel bucket, and heaved a ceiling fan on to his shoulder. He was hurrying home when the police arrived. They caned him till he dropped everything and ran for his life.

He returned a sad, bruised man to his sister's house, where he was staying. He was to marry her daughter that season. He did, but I suspect he won the girl's hand and her mother's sympathy because he had tried to salvage the deposits of the man who was to become his father-in-law.

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