The Con Master: An Update

If you cast your eye gently to the right, you'll see my number one most read post is about Anirudh Aiyar, called Do You Know This Man? Since that post was written in 2010, I have received SO. MANY. EMAILS about him, basically telling me what he's been doing all over the place, that I thought it deserved a part two.



So, here's what happened since the last time we spoke about him  deceiving a friend of mine.






The most interesting story I heard about ol' AA, was a collection of news links that a reader mailed me.  It turns out that he has had some run-ins with the law. In 2007, he was caught by the Colaba police for walking out of a restaurant without paying the bill and going to Mukesh Ambani's house and asking for a job.

On Thursday, Iyer was arrested by the Colaba police after he did not pay the Rs 1,800 bill at Tendulkar’s in Colaba. 

He was warned by the court and released after he promised the judge he would return to his hometown down south. But this is not the first time Iyer has been caught by the police.

He was brought to the Colaba police station earlier this month after he failed to pay for his dinner at Faryana Restaurant in Colaba.   A few days later, he created a scene outside Ambani’s Cuffe Parade home claiming the Reliance big man had promised him a job. The security had to call the police. 

Then there was a bizarre kidnapping case where he reported two UK based girls missing and that someone had called him asking for a ransom of... Rs 350 crore. Yeah. This was in 2006.

Mani told the Deccan police that on January 15, he received a call from an unknown person, demanding Rs 350 crore for the release of two friends — Yasmin Khan (28) and Sheetal Khanna (27), both residents of London.

According to the police, Mani said that Yasmin and Sheetal arrived in India on January 15 and were proceeding to Pune in a Cool Cab. They took a halt at Lonavla and disappeared, Mani told the police.

Assistant commissioner of police Dilip Shepal told TOI that Mani claimed to be a representative of UKbased IT firm, Core Solutions.

His educational background was stated as B.Com (external) and according to Mani, the two girls included his "former and current girlfriend".

Mani told the police that he was looking after the expansion plans of the UKbased firm and the two girls had come to India to meet him.

 

 And then there's the story, also from 2006, about him issuing a bunch of cheques for a flat and they all bounced. It's a bit of a sadder story though, because allegedly he put his grandmother in a nursing home and that cheque bounced too. But, don't feel TOO bad for him because this also happened:

According to Pardeshi, Mani had stayed at Hotel Sun-n-Sand on Bund Garden Road on February 16 and 17. He allegedly issued a cheque of over Rs two lakh to the hotel saying that he was going to stay for a month. He was asked to leave when the cheque bounced.

Mani had also issued cheques of Rs 41 lakh and Rs 16 lakh to car dealers for a Pajero and a Sonata which also bounced. The cars were not delivered to Mani.

I've also been getting a lot of emails, the most recent one I'm not going to publish, but suffice to say, dear reader, that it's very likely that he does NOT have custody of two small children because his wife and friend died in a car crash. Unless he had them in the last three years.



Excerpts from reader emails:

Last year (August 2009), he came to my apartment through another roommate for a week saying similar story that he worked in PWC, and that he was some director in PWC and he later started a VC ( venture Capital) called hyper capital , and now  he is awaiting some fund to be transferred through some one in London to start graphic novel company. He talks pretty well, he kind of got hold of my roommate with his talks. later he got into some weird calls to US( ended up in 10K  in a month of telephone bill, and when numbers were traced all were phone SEX ) , and he  pretty much  depended on roommate even for food.He even tried to cheat our house owner with some weird real estate deals. . Things got worse when he couldn't pay 10K he took from my roommate , and he started pressurizing his to pay back the earliest.



One day , this guy left the house , giving the key to neighbor saying he got his money wired transferred from the "London" investor and that he is going to Tirupati. He informed my roommate that the 10K is kept in our house shelf.



When we came back, he took his laptop, SLR camera and there was no sign of the 10K in the shelf . It took this event for my roommate to realize this guy is a crook. we did some background check , and found he has cheated a call center with similar stories, he had many fake names. To be honest , he has just completed CA inter . All Harvard, LSE, London, NY stuffs  are lies. 2 days later he called the roomate , and said he is happy now , that he got his money transferred, and we said about the money not there in the shelf , he tried to blame it on  the neighbour. We planned a plot, to get this guy back to Chennai , we acted as if we believed him. Also, I felt as he is a pervert, and he act as a Casanova for whom any girl will fall for. He even said his network with  some senior VP of citi bank , who is working on the money transfer .A day after that , the guy came to our house, As planned we trapped him , and got him arrested . Through some influence , we did get the laptop and SLR camera , which he has sold at Chennai and bangalore respectively for very meager amount. Also, he did spent the money on his stay in lavish hotels in Bangalore and Tirupati. 



He was in Chennai central Jail till jan, by then I moved to US.

and:

I guess I was one of his prey's too. I met him at Landmark, Pune. This guy came up to me and started a conversation, telling me that his car (some big expensive one!) had broken down and he had given it to the work shop and was passing time at Landmark. Then, we went to grab a cup of coffee. We met again after a duration of 6 months I guess for coffee.



He told me all these stories, that you have mentioned in your blog with exact same details. Only the last part of him falling sick is something I am unaware of, as I lost touch with him. I think he must have mentioned your friend, Ira also to me, maybe with a different name. It's really disgusting what he does. I always had a little doubt in him, because whatever big big future plans he used to have never seemed to quite work out. I never saw him coming from Mumbai to Pune in any of his cars. And, no cell phone! A little hard to believe.

and from the comments:

I know Anirudh since 1997 and we studied C.A. foundation course together in Madras. Since he couldn't get into a proper college he decided to do his B.Com through correspondence from University of Madras. Prior to that he was from Shishya School in Madras (Adyar). His mother did die in 1997 and I was actually there at the funeral. I felt pity for him and was in touch with him till 2002 after which I couldn't take his nonsense and decided he was not the kind of person I wanted to be friends with. Very surprising he was a C.A. Foundation Rank holder in 1997 (he wrote the November 1997 Exam). Post his C.A. Foundation he got into PWC through his mother's influence (she died soon after that). He has a younger brother who is far more decent and I believe he is in Australia right now.



Anirudh was always the kind of guy who would create a make-shift world around him and try to deceive others. He never had any ambitions in life and was a born loser. I never thought he would be a professional conman. He used to buy cars every 6 months as if money was falling out of the skies. It sometimes made me feel like I hadn't achieved anything as yet since we were only students then.



A few months back I received a phone call from Madras (I now live in UK). Turns out the call is from Anirudh. He tried to give me the same sob story but I wasn't but his crap. I figured he got my number from Facebook and the first thing I did after the call was delete my number from FB.



Just about 15 days later, I got 2 messages on FB from his room-mates at Madras. The letter is as below:



Karthikeyan Vaidhyanathan 09 September 2009 at 19:36 Report

Hi,

This is Karthikeyan from Chennai, India. Do you know Anirudh Aiyar, who is a common friend in our Facebook list? Do you have his contact number? Please reply. Thank you.



Vivek Venkateswar 26 September 2009 at 09:07

Hi Karthik... Anirudh's contact details are on his profile on facebook.

Sent via Facebook Mobile



Karthikeyan Vaidhyanathan 26 September 2009 at 21:52 Report

but it is nothing but my apartment number :( thats y i asked you. Sorry to disturb you. But we caught him. He had accepted everything when we handed over him to police...



Vivek Venkateswar 05 October 2009 at 12:42

What is he is the Police for?



Karthikeyan Vaidhyanathan 08 November 2009 at 11:06 Report

for theft of camera and laptop and some other issues also



Vivek Venkateswar 09 November 2009 at 11:22

I am shocked... If he has stolen, he needs to be with the police.



Karthikeyan Vaidhyanathan 09 November 2009 at 18:28 Report

he did :( even we didnt expect that... but he did... do u know him? why he became like that?



Vivek Venkateswar 11 November 2009 at 10:26

I really don't know what happened to him... We were very close friends from 1997 to 2002 and studied for our CA together... Didn't really want to keep in touch with him after that as he was getting into wrong company... Guess this is what happens!!!

and lots more in the comments section.



The interesting thing is how many other con stories there were, it was like people got together to share who they'd been cheated by, not just this guy but a famous blogger apparently (still guessing who it is!) and a chick and loads of other people going around the country deceiving people, for what? A sick sense of control?



The whole Bitty Mohanty thing made me think of Anirudh Aiyar again, and the most recent email, promising to marry someone (the one I alluded to earlier, with the fact that he has custody of two children). But also, I must say, over the years, when the hurt faded away from our memories, I'm beginning to regard him with a certain fascination. How is he doing it with mostly the same name? Isn't he scared of being caught? Does he know people are discussing him on the internet? I guess none of the things he's doing--except for the stealing--is a crime, and even with theft, he's only choosing to steal little things, small amounts of cash, defaulting on a bill and so on, which most people won't have the patience to take him to court for. Still, it's interesting to know he's still at large, still playing, who knows, maybe he'll wash up in your city next. Or my doorstep. Can't imagine I'm his favourite person at the moment.