Forgery

          

            I scanned some mechanics journal diagrams drawn by a friend and printed them on journal paper. Unfortunately 1 diagram was not editted properly. Editting involves erasing stray lines, marks, colour contrasts and smudges. The person correcting it saw this discrepancy in the diagram and quickly pointed out I might have done a colour photo copy. He asked me to get an eraser and started to see if the diagrams were done in pencil. Thankfully the Masters student who was correcting my journal was kind and told me we also used to do G.T. (glass trace for those unaware) in our times. No problem, you are off the hook for once. I got 6 diagrams corrected.  

            My first year at college and this is an art I have become good at a small scale. It is a subject (not taught in college but practised there) I have a decent hold on after the first year. 

            What do you think when you think about forgery? There are various levels to it. Earlier they had people forging land certificates and sell a plot they did not own to some unsuspecting person. Now you have people selling the paper on which the certificate is printed and making millions. Guess the name of the dude who forged stamp paper and blew 3 million (30 lakh) rupees over his favorite bar girl in a night. Wonder what’s happening to him. Hasn’t been in the news lately. There is this other category also who do things on a lesser scale. People selling fake tickets to the Liverpool, AC Milan final on the day of the game to the hordes of Liverpool fans who poured in the day of the game. Ah! I forgot the rate, 3000 euros. I could go to New York and back thrice with such sales. Inspiring people. Motivate me to try new things. Guys inform me when there is an India, Bangladesh match in Mumbai. I am up for it. G.S. sahib  could probably get me some sample tickets to work on. The guys selling the tickets did get caught eventually. The name of the bar girl fanatic is Telgi.           

        What about selling tickets in black? The guy who sold me tickets on the first day to Lokhandwala made a 50 rupee profit. We could start a portal with all these blokes registered on it. We could book your tickets in black on the day of the show. Charge a 10 rupee commission on every ticket sold. Blokesinblack.com sounds decent. Rock bottom rates on the tickets with agents at almost every decent theatre. Don’t expect some guy selling black tickets at the theatres on Lamington road. They look like sheds. One gets the feeling that one is entering some abandoned building while going in. B-grade theatres as Sunny and Aditya (from 4^th year mechanical) call it. Incentive to visit Lamington road.            

          It would be cool to do cards. Fake cards for some undisclosed purpose. No, not  credit cards. Not debit cards either but these would be the eventual goal. Did a few signatures previously. I am reminded about a great incident that occurred at school and is worth mentioning. A few friends got suspended for inappropriate behaviour and excessive mischief at school. So as usual principal writes a note to their parents in their hand books asking them not to send their children to school for a couple of days. These guy sign on behalf of their parents in the hand book. They prepare a form or somehow convince their parents about some school trip and manage to get some 400 rupees each. What do they do? They go to Water Kingdom or Essel world on the days they were supposed to be at home repenting their actions. Leave home perfectly in school uniform and come back home on time. Parents think they went to school and came back. It makes you wonder, may be they did deserve the suspension without the water park visit thrown in.           

         Talking about cards. The magnetic strip in each card would be cool to forge. Each bank would have its own unique code in the strip. Another challenge but less complex would be to duplicate the electronic keys hotels have. Most large hotels have these. These keys are programmable and each time a new guest checks in they are programmed fresh. So you have programmers for these, making the job more convenient. Also in many cases the key is programmed with the date the guest checks in and room number.           

          Some guys in some European country managed to rent a place and make an actual fake A.T.M. of some bank. So people walk in, you give them cash they want to withdraw in exchange for their card number and pin. They too were caught. Sometimes it makes me wonder are do people really get away with this? If so what are the odds? Well I wouldn’t have heard of the ones who got away successfully. No news people to report them. Railway coupons seem like a soft target. Print about twenty Rs. 5 coupons on a page. Cost price is Rs. 5 for high quality printing. Profit= S.P. – C.P. Reminds me of profit and loss from school. Profit is Rs. 95. Sell to all of V.J.T.I. which is a ready market of at least 1000+ people to dump your defective good on. Give them a buck off each coupon. Incentive to buy. People don’t buy anything but P.C.B.’s from me. Also don’t ask me to buy a ticket for a movie for you people.           

           A nice one was this thing in France. Some guys somehow tampered with the barcode of vintage wine worth $500 and above. They changed the barcode to $20 and checked out with it. They could have replaced the existing barcode with that of the cheap wine or kind of figured out how the stores barcode system works and made their own tags.

             I was thinking, why not some 15 people pool in around 1000 rupees and buy a projector. We need a decent place to use it. That’s 1000 rupees each. A hostel room with a white wall should suffice. Its like our theatre experience. Probably could throw in some cheap surround sound system. Watch around ten movies there instead of the theatre and you square off your investment.

             There are bigger frauds like corporate ones such as Enron and others. If you have any suggestions or opportunities please feel free to contact me. If the business model is exciting enough I am up for being a business partner. My actions are not worth mentioning. I expect Gaonkar sir to come online and read my blog. May be he would put it on a feed. 

~ by dhruvprotect on June 7, 2007.