Funny side up: Frauds are waiting to happen

The author, PV Subramanyam, write from moneycontrol.com. The views and ideas expressed in this article are his own.

I am more than convinced that frauds are just waiting to happen. You need to put in a little effort, that's all.

Let's say, you want to start a 'we save stray dogs by covering them with blankets' campaign. You need some good campaign line, a nice network, some religious leaders to back you, some social leaders to get the initial thing going. Soon enough, you'll have a blog, a website, a magazine, a group of trustees and perhaps a USD 1 million corpus.

Then you open a bank account and put your bank account number on all your communication. Suddenly you will have enough money to buy a Mercedes for yourself and your fellow ‘trustees’.

This is as far as small donations go. But let's think big! How do you convince the ‘sophisticated investor’ to invest in a scheme that you create?

Try the following steps:

1. Launch a scheme in a small location: The smaller the location, it's that much better for you. Make sure nobody has heard of you.

2. Once you have some money, form a few companies, trusts, and the like.

3. Get some political support, preferably from three to four national parties and one to two local parties.

4. Create jobs, set up a hospital. Usually, many people wanting to move up on Maslow’s table will be happy to fund you.

5. Get a few retired bureaucrats, bank chairmen, and the like to adorn your boards. Don't worry about them asking questions.

6. Join nice networking organisations. You can get some of the religious organisations to co-brand with you.

7. Allow membership only by word of mouth, and get very well qualified consultants to create impossible-to-understand jargons.

8. When people ask too many questions, return their money promptly, and insult them in public. Immediately, give a bonus to the social circle of the ex-member.

9. Give returns consistently and get people to put in more money.

10. As long as you give Rs 200 as return, but get the investor to invest Rs 2,000 do not worry too much about percentages. That's for accountants to take care of.

11. Get an auditor who gives squeaky clean reports.

12. If the auditor does not have an office in New York and London, convince him to open one. Of course, you will fund his travel and stay.

13. Attend and sponsor seminars on 'Corporate Governance’, ‘Understanding the Risk of Equities’ , talks by anybody who uses words like strategic, black swan, re-sizing, global, local. Ensure that the jargon is dazzling.

14. Make sure the power point presentations look dazzling. There are organisations who will do that for you for an amount as small as Rs 2 lakh.

15. In your office (in any part of the world) have photos of Dalai Lama, Clintons (if you cannot get Clinton's portrait, Amar Singh can help), and the likes.

16. Your brochures should carry a few international addresses.

17. Hey, what are you waiting for?

If Maytas is the opposite of Satyam, so in untruth!

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