Speaker 1: What sharining my lonnie unuses? Would I have? I have?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out what the plural would be.
Speaker 1: Would it be Sharene's Lanna units like attorneys general? I
Speaker 1: think the last name is you and I. You know,
Speaker 1: Sharne's Lana and I sharenus Is, I mean accepted. I'm
Speaker 1: literally we're gonna call you sharenus Is from now on.
Speaker 1: I'm just letting you know I love it. Grant Taylor
Speaker 1: in middle school coined the nickname Sharnie Weenie. I've embraced
Speaker 1: what was it? What was his name? Sharie Grant Taylor? Oh,
Speaker 1: are they're gonna say Brent Taylor, who's the chuttiest cop
Speaker 1: in Portland who got removed from the riot team for
Speaker 1: shooting too many people with grenades for no reason? Oh jesus,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that would have been amazing, not a
Speaker 1: creative like insult nickname. That right is beneath you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that person is trash. You know who is also kind
Speaker 1: of well, I don't know, we'll decide if he's trash.
Speaker 1: You're probably gonna like this guy too. Um, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about a very special con artist today. A fellow
Speaker 1: named not war Lal, who was India's greatest con man.
Speaker 1: Now I want to start this by saying, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how accurate most of this is. There are
Speaker 1: very few English language sources on his life, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't even find a lot of online like Hindi sources
Speaker 1: that I could translate. There's very little about this guy
Speaker 1: that is credible. There's a couple of like India today,
Speaker 1: a couple of like broadly credible websites that have stories
Speaker 1: about him on there, but like fuck, it is hard
Speaker 1: to find ship about this dude that is not like
Speaker 1: some weird little listical or basically there was a Bollywood
Speaker 1: movie made about his life that is completely inaccurate. Hard
Speaker 1: to tell what is true about this guy, but it's
Speaker 1: a fun story. So we're gonna, we're gonna, We're gonna.
Speaker 1: I did the best job I could and we're going
Speaker 1: to it seems like a through fee with some con artists, right,
Speaker 1: like right, it's you don't know what's true. If you
Speaker 1: are someone who spends this guy's case, like literally like
Speaker 1: sixty straight years lying to people and conning people, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be hard to tell out what was true about
Speaker 1: your life. You're gonna have very little in the way
Speaker 1: of heart details. Um, but all we have about this
Speaker 1: dude is fascinating and it's gonna be a fun, short
Speaker 1: little story. So Mithilesh Kumar Shrivastava. Srivastava was born in
Speaker 1: the village of Bangarra in a place called Bihar, India,
Speaker 1: at some point in between nineteen twelve and nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty wide margin to not know exactly
Speaker 1: when this guy was born. Um, it is one of
Speaker 1: those things. He's he's he grows up in a small
Speaker 1: village in India in the like more than a century
Speaker 1: ago and like to this day. So there's this thing,
Speaker 1: this big celebration they do every twelve years called the
Speaker 1: kumb Mela. I mean to do it every four years,
Speaker 1: but every twelve years it's in Allahabad. And every time
Speaker 1: it's in Allahabad, it's like the largest gathering of human
Speaker 1: beings for any purpose in human history. Like a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million people came at the last Mela in
Speaker 1: Allahabad which I was at. Um when I was there
Speaker 1: was about thirty or forty million people at a time
Speaker 1: in intensity like it's it's incredibly it's just this unbelievably
Speaker 1: massive thing. Sorry, mind dumb. What is it? What is
Speaker 1: what is it for? It's it's a it's a religious celebration.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a Hindu religious celebration. And
Speaker 1: it's so many people go that every year about thirty
Speaker 1: thousand or so people disappear. And when I say disappear,
Speaker 1: I mean these are people who live in villages so
Speaker 1: isolated and so small that they don't have government documents
Speaker 1: like that. Their only identity is as a part of
Speaker 1: this village, and they get separated from their people and
Speaker 1: they're just like people without like a legal life. Like
Speaker 1: that still happens in India. That's why this guy. Part
Speaker 1: of why this guy's like this, Like we don't have
Speaker 1: like government documents about this dude's early life, right, Like
Speaker 1: he's born in nineteen twelve and some or or sometime
Speaker 1: in between there and some little village. We have very
Speaker 1: little about his actual early life about is like government
Speaker 1: identity or whatever, which is part of what enables him
Speaker 1: to do the conning he does. Right, things are very
Speaker 1: chaotic and India during the period where he's growing up,
Speaker 1: this is like he kind of comes in his early
Speaker 1: adulthood during the period where like the British government, UM
Speaker 1: gives up controlling India. So like this guy. Part of
Speaker 1: why he's able to get away with so much is
Speaker 1: he he lives during a very chaotic time in India
Speaker 1: UM and as a result, we know very little about
Speaker 1: his early childhood. One version of his story states that
Speaker 1: the inciting incident that kind of led to his break
Speaker 1: from mainstream society occurred in nineteen thirty two, when he
Speaker 1: was a ninth grader at Patna High School. Travastava was
Speaker 1: not a good student, particularly when it came to mathematics.
Speaker 1: His teachers noted to his parents that he was extremely intelligent,
Speaker 1: which led Shrivastava's father to the conclusion that his son
Speaker 1: was simply refusing to work hard. Lectures from his dad
Speaker 1: turned into yelling and eventually to physical abuse. The first
Speaker 1: time Shravastava's father hit him was also the last. Shravastava
Speaker 1: fled home the very next day, eventually resurfacing in the
Speaker 1: nearby city of Calcutta. This one version of his story,
Speaker 1: and it is the version that paints the most sympathetic
Speaker 1: picture of young Trevastava. Another version of the story states
Speaker 1: that as a preteen, he realized he had the ability
Speaker 1: to almost perfectly forge the signature of any person he chose.
Speaker 1: One day, a family friend asked him to deposit some
Speaker 1: money in a nearby bank. Sharik copied their signature and
Speaker 1: later used it to withdraw a thousand rupees from their account.
Speaker 1: According to this version of events, Shari's crime was found
Speaker 1: out and he was exiled from his village and forced
Speaker 1: to flee his home at any rate. By the time
Speaker 1: he was in his late teens, he was a lone
Speaker 1: and unsupported in Calcutta, So we don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: he gets there. There's kind of two versions of the story.
Speaker 1: One is his dad beats him and he flees. That's
Speaker 1: obviously the more sympathetic. One is he steals from a
Speaker 1: family friend and he gets kicked out of the village.
Speaker 1: I don't really know which one is true. I mean,
Speaker 1: either one I feel like, I don't hate, like it's
Speaker 1: not like, yeah, one is more like he's a victim,
Speaker 1: but the other one he's desperate and also you know,
Speaker 1: like who cares. Yeah, I mean it's they're both good
Speaker 1: con artist origin stories. So uh. At that time, Calcutta
Speaker 1: was the capital of the British raj and it was
Speaker 1: a city defined by its almost unbelievable gap between the
Speaker 1: colonial rich they're fortunate chosen Indian allies and employees, and
Speaker 1: a seething mass of starving urban poor. It's not for nothing,
Speaker 1: that is where Mother Teresa has her like her set up.
Speaker 1: She's a problematic figure, but she's there because there's so
Speaker 1: much poverty in Calcutta. Few cities in history have been
Speaker 1: harder places for a young pubescent boy with no money
Speaker 1: to survive. And yet somehow Shravastava managed. He enrolled in
Speaker 1: a Bachelor in Commerce to graduate course at Calcutta University,
Speaker 1: presumably after lying about his age. We don't know how
Speaker 1: he supported himself. He had no relatives in the city,
Speaker 1: but somehow he got by long enough to meet and
Speaker 1: befriended businessman Seth keshav Ram, who became his first mark.
Speaker 1: Seth was in the market for a private tutor for
Speaker 1: his children. Servastava knew he could do the job. He
Speaker 1: just needed to convince Seth of that. So he produced
Speaker 1: a series of testimonials from satisfied parents by forging signatures
Speaker 1: and different handwriting styles to make them look like genuine
Speaker 1: notes from actual people who actually existed. Seth was only
Speaker 1: impressed by how highly recommended this young man was, and
Speaker 1: he hired Travastova to teach his son and daughter for
Speaker 1: thirty rupees per month. Travastava did this job for several months,
Speaker 1: teaching this rich man's children god only knows what, because
Speaker 1: he did not have much of an education himself. After
Speaker 1: he'd been on the job, awhile Shri asked Seth for
Speaker 1: a loan so he could purchase some books. Seth said no.
Speaker 1: Depending on who you believe, this was the inciting incident
Speaker 1: that really turned Shre against all rich people. He quit
Speaker 1: his job and discussed, and he set to work getting revenge. First,
Speaker 1: he forged another set of fake credicials and used them
Speaker 1: to get a job as the headmaster of a school
Speaker 1: that sets kids attended. Seth was impressed. When Srivastava got hired.
Speaker 1: He apologized to his former employee and hired him back
Speaker 1: as a private tutor for much more money. Shri took
Speaker 1: the job, but he had not yet gotten his revenge.
Speaker 1: At the time. In Calcutta, there was a serious shortage
Speaker 1: of high quality cloth. Shri told Seth that he had
Speaker 1: a relative who just come from Bombay with two hundred
Speaker 1: bales of cloth that he wanted to sell on the
Speaker 1: black market for the low low price of four point
Speaker 1: five lack of rupees or four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: The cloth could be sets. A lock is like an
Speaker 1: Indian unit of measurement that means better a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: or so l a k h L. There's this cloth
Speaker 1: shortage and Shri is like, hey, I got my guy
Speaker 1: coming in. He's got a bunch of this cloth. He's
Speaker 1: gonna sell it to you for four hundred fifty thousand rupees,
Speaker 1: which is cheap, and you can sell the cloth back
Speaker 1: for much more money. Being a businessman, Seth couldn't pass
Speaker 1: up the opportunity to make some black market bucks. And
Speaker 1: now that Shravastava had proven himself legitimate, Seth was willing
Speaker 1: to trust the man with hundreds of thousands of rupees
Speaker 1: where he had once been unwilling to trust him with hundreds,
Speaker 1: So he agreed to the deal. Once he did, Trevastava
Speaker 1: informed him that the situation had changed. His relative had
Speaker 1: returned to Bombay, but if Seth, if Seth would send
Speaker 1: the cash to that city, he Shravastava would personally guarantee
Speaker 1: the delivery of the baals to Calcutta. Seth was willing
Speaker 1: to do this, but he insisted Trevastava would have to
Speaker 1: go to Bombay with the money and one of Seth's
Speaker 1: agents in order to make sure the deal with through properly.
Speaker 1: Shri agree and he traveled to Bombay with Seth Man
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from a write up in India
Speaker 1: today here. On the journey, Shrevastava had cleverly though casually
Speaker 1: regaled the agent with stories of Bombay's tough police force
Speaker 1: and the ruthless elements in the underworld who had no
Speaker 1: compunctions about dispatching any outsider who dared to poach on
Speaker 1: their preserves. Understandably nervous, the agent begged Shravastava to leave
Speaker 1: him behind and take the money himself to purchase the cloth.
Speaker 1: Shravastava agreed and departed, with the route be four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand rupees. He never returned. Instead, he arrived
Speaker 1: in Patna a few days later and proudly handed his
Speaker 1: father a hundred thousand rupees as a gift. He told
Speaker 1: his father that he had become a major shareholder at
Speaker 1: a big company in Calcutta. Shravastava returned to Calcutta the
Speaker 1: same week, but Seth had heard of his arrival and
Speaker 1: sent hired thugs to retrieve the money. Shravastava spun them
Speaker 1: a sob story about being chased by the police and
Speaker 1: having to abandon the money, but Seth was unconvinced. He
Speaker 1: gave Shravastava four days in which to find the money,
Speaker 1: failing which he threatened to have him murdered. The moment
Speaker 1: Seth left, Shravastova rushed to the police station, where he
Speaker 1: lodged a complaint against Seth, alleging Seth had threatened his
Speaker 1: life refusing to become his agent for black market deals.
Speaker 1: Servastava also gave the police a detailed count of Seth's
Speaker 1: clandestine criminal deals. Steals half a million rupees from this
Speaker 1: guy and then turns him into the police when he
Speaker 1: threatens to murder him. Um so yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's what Yeah, that's what he did. It's also like
Speaker 1: who are who are you? Who you gonna trust? Right
Speaker 1: like the this foreigner you know? Yeah, I mean they're both.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things. This doesn't wind
Speaker 1: up working out for him. So snitching worked at first,
Speaker 1: because Seth and his goons get immediately arrested by the
Speaker 1: police and taken into custody. Uh. And since Seth was
Speaker 1: not a really nice guy, has men have no loyalty
Speaker 1: to him, so they immediately confessed to planning a murder.
Speaker 1: So now Seth is fucked no matter what, because he's
Speaker 1: just been caught attempting to murder somebody, and he decides
Speaker 1: to at least take Shri down with him, and he
Speaker 1: tells the police that Shar had been trying to set
Speaker 1: up an illegal black market cloth deal. So the cops
Speaker 1: arrest Tree too, and in December eleven seven, he goes
Speaker 1: to jail for the first time. Um, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's how this started. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: go to the cops, that's what happens. So he gets
Speaker 1: sentenced to a six month imprisonment, young and at that point,
Speaker 1: not as savvy as he would later be. Sri served
Speaker 1: out his whole sentence. He was released and immediately committed
Speaker 1: more fraud. We don't know the precise nature of this crime,
Speaker 1: but given the stories it's gone so far, it doesn't
Speaker 1: take a whole lot of imagination to guess what kind
Speaker 1: of ship he got up to. He gets caught a
Speaker 1: second time, almost immediately in a sentence to eight more
Speaker 1: months of hard labor. He serves his time again and
Speaker 1: he decides, after two sentences behind bars, it's time for
Speaker 1: him to move his base of operations away from Calcutta.
Speaker 1: They know him too well there, so he moves to
Speaker 1: Madras and he changes his name to not war Lal,
Speaker 1: a name under which he would become one of the
Speaker 1: most famous people in modern Indian history. Now, the Madras
Speaker 1: police record just one crime by nut war Lal in
Speaker 1: their files, another suspected fraud. The fact that they only
Speaker 1: caught him once suggest that he'd gotten savvy er after
Speaker 1: his second arrest, because if we know one thing about
Speaker 1: not war Lala at this point in the story, it's
Speaker 1: that he cannot stop himself from conning people. By ninety nine,
Speaker 1: he had returned to northern India and for several years
Speaker 1: he roams from city to city, conning businessmen out of
Speaker 1: there also ill gotten gains. None of his subsequent grifts
Speaker 1: were as ambitious as his staff from seft. He steals
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars rupee from a Khan and for Karabad
Speaker 1: forty dollars from a khan and Asamgar. The cases are
Speaker 1: individually smaller, but there's a ton of them. He's just
Speaker 1: constantly scam scamming tens of thousands of rupees out of people,
Speaker 1: and it's more than the law can keep up with.
Speaker 1: What kind of people is he scamming? Businessman? It's it's
Speaker 1: always like, Hey, I've got some sort of a deal.
Speaker 1: I've got this black market deal. You give me the cash,
Speaker 1: I'll get this thing, I'll get this study and then
Speaker 1: he skips town. You know, that's the way this guy works.
Speaker 1: Um and again it's the same kind of thing as
Speaker 1: Victor Lustig, where a lot of it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want you to go to the cops, so I'll make
Speaker 1: sure you're agreeing to break the law first. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wants to compromise them so they don't. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: ever turn him in, So Sardar, he's he's very fast.
Speaker 1: He's constantly skipping cities. Isn't like dozens of cities at
Speaker 1: this point scamming people, So the cops are always a
Speaker 1: few steps behind him, but he leaves enough of a
Speaker 1: pattern that at least one detective becomes obsessed with him.
Speaker 1: This guy, Sardar Hari Singh, who's the inspector of police
Speaker 1: in a city called Luck now like just becomes very
Speaker 1: dedicated to capturing this guy. He's probably the first person
Speaker 1: to report on the budding con man's m O in
Speaker 1: a concerted way. And I'm gonna quote from India today again.
Speaker 1: His initial operations involved the swindling of goods from jewelry
Speaker 1: stores in large department stores in the cities he visited.
Speaker 1: He would first open a bank account in a large bank.
Speaker 1: He would then win the confidence of the shopkeepers by
Speaker 1: paying for his purchases by checks, which were promptly cashed.
Speaker 1: Once he had earned their trust, that Warlow would withdraw
Speaker 1: his bank account and on the same day by large
Speaker 1: amounts of jewelry and expensive items from the stores, which
Speaker 1: he could sell later. He was careful, though, to limit
Speaker 1: his purchases to a few thousand rupees so as to
Speaker 1: combat any suspicion that might arise. He would then disappear
Speaker 1: from the city and another page will be added to
Speaker 1: the neat war law legend. So pretty not not super
Speaker 1: ambitious cons here, but very smart. You know, he's it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. You establish a base line of trust,
Speaker 1: you get them to think that your money is good,
Speaker 1: and then you steal right. That's how it works. So
Speaker 1: he keeps this up for half a decade, uh and
Speaker 1: in nineteen until in nineteen forty four, he is arrested
Speaker 1: for more fraud, this time in a city called Gorekpor.
Speaker 1: Now we don't know how he gets out, but this
Speaker 1: arrest marks the first time that he busts himself out
Speaker 1: of prison, and it's not going to be his last.
Speaker 1: He's re arrested at a metabad in nineteen forty five
Speaker 1: and released on bail this time, and then he's re
Speaker 1: arrested in Varanasi a few weeks later in connection to
Speaker 1: a series of forged receipts issued at a railway station.
Speaker 1: This con represented an evolution for net war law. See.
Speaker 1: The idea was that he would book railway wagons, posing
Speaker 1: as a businessman who needed to transport sugar or some
Speaker 1: other commodity. He would actually pay the train company the
Speaker 1: salute minimum he could for the smallest amount of space
Speaker 1: he could book in their freight section. Then he would
Speaker 1: doctor the receipt that he'd given them and make it
Speaker 1: look like he had rented much more space on the
Speaker 1: train so that he would be able to claim that
Speaker 1: he had a lot more sugar or whatever than he
Speaker 1: actually had. Then he would travel ahead to the destination
Speaker 1: city of the train and he would sell the cargo
Speaker 1: to speculators there. So he actually books a tiny amount
Speaker 1: of space on the train. He makes it look like
Speaker 1: he's booked a lot. He's like, I've got all this
Speaker 1: sugar coming in. You want to buy it? You give
Speaker 1: me the money. Here's the slit. The train's gonna arrive
Speaker 1: in another day. He would show them the fake receipts
Speaker 1: is proof that he had the goods, and when they
Speaker 1: paid him, he would take the money and run. And
Speaker 1: when the fires arrived at the train station to pick
Speaker 1: up their commodities, they find only a few bags of
Speaker 1: sand and bricks. He's gotten a lot more ambitious here.
Speaker 1: He's diversified. As all con men need to do um
Speaker 1: and not. Marlow had a few different schemes that one
Speaker 1: had to. He had to run a bunch of different
Speaker 1: scams and given time to stay solving because all of
Speaker 1: these cons require that he have upfront money in order
Speaker 1: to make more money later. One of his scams was
Speaker 1: to open multiple bank accounts in a city under the
Speaker 1: name of a fake company. He would lease office space,
Speaker 1: purchase expensive looking furniture, and hire attractive secretaries to staff it.
Speaker 1: He would then befriend several bank managers in the city
Speaker 1: and wine and dine them, making sure to show off
Speaker 1: both his offices and his sexy employees. Once they trusted
Speaker 1: him and believed his business was genuine, he would request
Speaker 1: to be able to make a large overdraft, so like
Speaker 1: basically like, hey, I don't have the money now, I
Speaker 1: need you guys to give me a loan and it'll
Speaker 1: like you've seen how successful my businesses. I'll have the
Speaker 1: cash for you soon. Uh. And the bankers would always
Speaker 1: say yes. They would allow him to withdraw huge sums
Speaker 1: of money on credit once he had because he's he's
Speaker 1: done business with them before he sets up accounts. He
Speaker 1: puts money in their banks. It makes it look like
Speaker 1: it's a real business. He winds and dines them. You
Speaker 1: get there like you give them a little and you
Speaker 1: take a long. He has the basic amount of credibility
Speaker 1: to get away with. And it's the same thing why
Speaker 1: Trump works, right. Trump is is like its like seven
Speaker 1: million dollars or something right, because rich guys trust other
Speaker 1: rich guys, and that's the way being rich works. You
Speaker 1: don't put your own money up for risk. You get
Speaker 1: the banks money and like, yeah, so, but he just
Speaker 1: takes the money and runs and he abandons the city,
Speaker 1: his employees and whatever office he'd rented in the process.
Speaker 1: He was caught for one of these schemes in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three. The Punjab National Bank is the bank that
Speaker 1: he conned. In that instance, he was arrested, but he
Speaker 1: escaped custody. He was later locked up in Delhi for
Speaker 1: the same crime, but disappeared mysteriously again. Details are thin
Speaker 1: on a lot of his escapes, but it's generally accepted
Speaker 1: that he would just bribe the ship out of all
Speaker 1: of his guards. He continued in this vein for more
Speaker 1: than a decade, carrying out countless, count countless cons in
Speaker 1: more cities than most people ever visit in their lifetimes.
Speaker 1: He was arrested again in March of nineteen fifty six
Speaker 1: in the city of Mirut, and once the cops who
Speaker 1: caught him realized who they had, they started reaching out
Speaker 1: to other police agencies across India. After a few days
Speaker 1: of phone calls, they realized the man in their charge
Speaker 1: was wanted by no fewer than thirty five police departments
Speaker 1: and different cities for different schemes. So this is his
Speaker 1: first big bust. And he serves ten months in prison
Speaker 1: in the rout before being transferred to luck Now to
Speaker 1: begin serving time for his crimes in that city. Wait,
Speaker 1: so ten months and then what was the rest of
Speaker 1: the sentence. I think he's got like another year or
Speaker 1: something that he's got to do, But he doesn't do
Speaker 1: that year, So he gets transferred to luck Now. Um,
Speaker 1: and one of the cops started saying, the detective who
Speaker 1: obsessed with him works in luck Now and he gets
Speaker 1: to know this guy he's been following during the time
Speaker 1: when not Warlal is in jail there, and Sardar claims
Speaker 1: that not war Laal immediately established himself as a kingpin
Speaker 1: in the jail. He kept access somehow to a huge
Speaker 1: amount of grifted cash, and he was able to hire
Speaker 1: a special cook who made him all of his meals,
Speaker 1: so he has his own private chef in prison. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's Alex. That's a solid plack, Robert. You know what
Speaker 1: else is a solid plex? Uh? That was beautiful that
Speaker 1: the RN x knife missile mean my heart melted. Well,
Speaker 1: check out these products and services that probably go to
Speaker 1: jail in India. Ah, we're back. So that Warlow's in jail.
Speaker 1: He's a kingpin there. He's got a special cook his
Speaker 1: He convinces his guards to give him the right to
Speaker 1: move freely anywhere in the jail he wants to go.
Speaker 1: Bottles of liquor were noted to appeariod appear mysteriously at
Speaker 1: his dining table in the private cell that the guards
Speaker 1: had issued him and his guards refer to him by
Speaker 1: his first name because he is paying all of them
Speaker 1: very well. Taking have access to all this grouptin money.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's you know, he's got a half of
Speaker 1: his schemes involved creating a ton of bank accounts. He
Speaker 1: has actual bank accounts for his money, but are on
Speaker 1: the outside. He's a good scammer, that's how you do it.
Speaker 1: Taking advantage of his privileged position in the jail, that
Speaker 1: Warlow hatched a scheme to escape. In February of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven. He managed to steal an inspector's uniform and
Speaker 1: literally walk out the front door of the jail. Guards
Speaker 1: saluted him on the way out he disappeared, escaping the
Speaker 1: city and somehow traveling to Allahabad, where he checked into
Speaker 1: a hotel and then opened an account in a local
Speaker 1: bank with a thousand rupees he'd gotten from some forgotten
Speaker 1: con Once he had a bank account, that Warlow forged
Speaker 1: a demand draft letter and used it to withdraw twenty
Speaker 1: thousand rupees he'd never actually had. By the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the list of criminal cases tied to Nat Warlole had
Speaker 1: had risen to nearly two hundred. He was caught again
Speaker 1: in the city of Kakanada and jailed in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: Now Warlole offered the guard keeping him locked in a
Speaker 1: ten thousand rupees to help him escape. The guard agreed,
Speaker 1: but when he opened the bundle of cash he'd been
Speaker 1: given after letting that Warloal escape, he realized that only
Speaker 1: the bills on the outside of the packet were real
Speaker 1: and the rest were blank paper. Yeah, he's he's He's
Speaker 1: a slick guy. In nineteen eighty, Nat Warlow was arrested
Speaker 1: yet again in Bombay. He was jailed and immediately started
Speaker 1: complaining that he was ill. He was taken to the
Speaker 1: hospital where he was treated for a kidney disorder and
Speaker 1: the urethical problem. After two weeks in the hospital, he
Speaker 1: left in night with a single police constable. Somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way he escaped again, probably via bribery. Now there
Speaker 1: are rumors that Warlow was something of a robin Hood
Speaker 1: figure in his native village of Bihar. There are stories
Speaker 1: of him bestowing fortunes on poor people, and over the
Speaker 1: years a mystique formed around him, helped by the fact
Speaker 1: that he seemed to only conn the wealthy and powerful. Now,
Speaker 1: Warlole is said to have once hosted a feast for
Speaker 1: everyone in his hometown of Bungara, funded it by his pillages,
Speaker 1: and then handed ten thousand rupees to each poor villager
Speaker 1: and disappeared into the night before the cops could catch him.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to say if this is true. Again, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of similar stories about like my cousin pretty
Speaker 1: Boy Floyd, that he would while he was on the run,
Speaker 1: wind up at some poor old ladies farmhouse and she
Speaker 1: would feed him and put him up for the night,
Speaker 1: and in the morning she would wake up, he'd be gone,
Speaker 1: and there'd be like a hundred dollar bill under his
Speaker 1: plate or something, and said that you just said pretty
Speaker 1: boy Floyd and that was that was that was his name. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: was one of the great bank robbers of the gangster
Speaker 1: era and also related to Robert Yeah. Yeah, but you said,
Speaker 1: it's just like my cousin pretty my grandma great grandma
Speaker 1: that he was a cousin to. His last name was Barnes.
Speaker 1: But um, what do you think your name is? What
Speaker 1: do you think pretty boy Floyd calls you? I have
Speaker 1: one good story about him, which is that when I
Speaker 1: was in a p English and I think eleventh grade,
Speaker 1: we were doing The Great Gatsby and so we have
Speaker 1: like a unit on like the thirties, the gangster era, thirties,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned that she likes asked if anyone like
Speaker 1: knew any famous gangsters other than like al Capone, and
Speaker 1: I mentioned pretty boy Floyd. She's like, how do you
Speaker 1: know about him? I was like, well, heast my cousin.
Speaker 1: And she's like, really, he shot my grandpa in the
Speaker 1: leg during a banker opery holy sh it. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh god, I'm so sorry, and she's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: don't be. He's told him not to move, and my
Speaker 1: grandpa moved, so he shot him in the leg. She
Speaker 1: was like he deserved it. I mean it was a
Speaker 1: bank robbery, you know, it was an insured bank. Well,
Speaker 1: machete man, Robert, you can continue now, okay, So um yeah, again,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of story is about con men and
Speaker 1: gangsters and stuff about how how generous. There would be
Speaker 1: a lot of these robin Hood stories, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are true in that they did bribe poor
Speaker 1: people because number one, it's cheap to buy bribe poor people,
Speaker 1: and number two, it's smart because poor people can hide
Speaker 1: your ass. You know, if you're gonna be going to
Speaker 1: ground a lot, if you're gonna have the cops always
Speaker 1: looking after you, you want little people with farms and
Speaker 1: like slums and stuff to want to hide your ass,
Speaker 1: you know. So again, I'm sure, now Warlald did have
Speaker 1: some robin Hood ship. I'm sure it was also mainly
Speaker 1: so that he didn't get caught, you know, like that's
Speaker 1: it's generally a pretty self served symbiotic relationship. Like they
Speaker 1: liked him because he would seem to be against the man,
Speaker 1: and he liked them because it's really easy to bribe
Speaker 1: poor people, Like a hundred rupees is not a ton
Speaker 1: of money. Um, So whatever the truth of why he
Speaker 1: was giving them cash. A lot of poor people in
Speaker 1: India believed him a hero. A statue was even erected
Speaker 1: in Bongara to honor him. I'm gonna quote from an
Speaker 1: article in The Times of India Crest edition here. Chandraballa YadA,
Speaker 1: a native of Bongara and currently working in the Ministry
Speaker 1: of Commerce in New Delhi, is happy to learn of
Speaker 1: the development of the statue that they're building. He was
Speaker 1: a real hero, he says. He duped hundreds of people
Speaker 1: for scores of rupees, but he helped the poor and
Speaker 1: spent the entire money on them. It's a sentiment that
Speaker 1: finds an amazing echo. It's a matter of privilege for
Speaker 1: us that he was one of us, said sud Hasanu Kumar,
Speaker 1: who grew up on nt war Lal stories. The legend,
Speaker 1: if anything, has only grown. Pan Madi Devi says that
Speaker 1: he has even helped people who have dropped nut War
Speaker 1: Law's name without really knowing him. Recalling an often told incidents,
Speaker 1: she says, once I was traveling in a train from
Speaker 1: Allahabad and the train police was after my life because
Speaker 1: I was traveling in an express train while I had
Speaker 1: a passenger train ticket. He rejected my pleas and was
Speaker 1: adamant that he would have to find or detain me.
Speaker 1: Then I told him, don't you know I belonged to
Speaker 1: that war law's village. Suddenly his demeanor changed and he said,
Speaker 1: oh you hail from that war law's village, then you
Speaker 1: can travel without a ticket, no problem. Well, so who knows?
Speaker 1: That's like? That's that's the like this guy is is huge,
Speaker 1: and that certain parts of India like he is. He
Speaker 1: becomes a folk by by the seventies, he's a folk
Speaker 1: hero um, and he has like a reputation. People respect him,
Speaker 1: people respect him, they like him. Cops don't like him,
Speaker 1: and cops are not happy when he gets a statue.
Speaker 1: But people who aren't cops like him. Um. People who
Speaker 1: aren't cops are rich like him a lot. By nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, he was famous enough to have a major
Speaker 1: Bollywood production made about his life, a movie called Mr.
Speaker 1: Nat Warlow, and the movie bears only the vaguest resemblance
Speaker 1: to his actual life. It was basically in a complete
Speaker 1: work of fantasy, but it was a huge hit and
Speaker 1: it cemented the con man's image in popular culture, and
Speaker 1: he is still conning in nineteen seventy nine, which is
Speaker 1: a great position to be in as a con man
Speaker 1: um that like you're he's like a full bona fied
Speaker 1: folk hero by this point in time. That's so funny
Speaker 1: that the movie was made and he was still doing
Speaker 1: it like it's like exposing it and then he's still going, yeah,
Speaker 1: still going. After breaking out of Kakanada jail in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: not Warlole traveled to a different Indian city whose name
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to try to pronounce, Like I
Speaker 1: know my limits on this stuff. He adopted a new
Speaker 1: fake name, Lakshman Narayan and started pretending to be a
Speaker 1: businessman from Bombay. He found a new mark, a sugar dealer,
Speaker 1: and gradually befriended him. Once they established some trust, not
Speaker 1: Warlow put in an order for eighty two thousand rupees
Speaker 1: worth of sugar. He asked it to be delivered to
Speaker 1: his address in Bombay and paid a four thousand rupee
Speaker 1: deposit for the sugar. He promised to pay the rest
Speaker 1: upon delivery. It should be obvious at this point that
Speaker 1: he had no intention of paying his friend back. Instead,
Speaker 1: he traveled to Bombay and met a guy named Mohan Garnani,
Speaker 1: president of the local sugar Merchant's Association. He somehow managed
Speaker 1: to convince Mohan that he was a close friend of
Speaker 1: Mohan's recently deceased uncle. Now that they were buds, nett
Speaker 1: Warlow told Mohan, Hey, I got all this sugar for sale.
Speaker 1: You want it? Mohan said yes, So nett Warlow sold
Speaker 1: him the sugar and took a sixty thousand rupee advance.
Speaker 1: When the rest of the sugar arrived, he waived the
Speaker 1: remainder of the fee that he'd agreed upon, telling Mohan
Speaker 1: that they were going to do more business together and
Speaker 1: he could just adjust the extra into that. Then he
Speaker 1: fled town and continued his conning career for four more years. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look up net Warlow online, you'll find that
Speaker 1: he is most famously referred to as the man who
Speaker 1: sold the taj Mahal, Which is why I'm putting him
Speaker 1: with listing in this because they both sold a bunch
Speaker 1: of a bunch of like. He didn't just sell the
Speaker 1: taj Mahal. He sold the Red Fort, which is this
Speaker 1: massive beautiful building in Jaipur, and he sold the Indian
Speaker 1: House of Parliament Um, he's very famous for this, and
Speaker 1: that is I wanted that the parliament was pretty interesting
Speaker 1: to me. But yeah, they both sold these like world wonders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out to be a great con, and we
Speaker 1: will talk about how they did it. But first, you
Speaker 1: know what else is a great con? Sharine, I was
Speaker 1: just gonna say, capitalism in general, fucking incredible con and
Speaker 1: ad breaks. We're back. So the story of how net
Speaker 1: Warl sold the taj Mahal. So unfortunately, for as wild
Speaker 1: as a story as this is, there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of hard details. It seems to have been. This
Speaker 1: is a con he pulled off, a butt he sold.
Speaker 1: We don't know how many times he sold the tosh
Speaker 1: the Hall. He did it regularly. This was like a
Speaker 1: thing that he would do. So he would he would
Speaker 1: dress up as a government official and he would find
Speaker 1: wealthy foreign tourists on vacation going to like see the
Speaker 1: taj Mahal, and he would have like meals with them
Speaker 1: and launch into conversations with them, and then he would
Speaker 1: he would kind of do the Eiffel Tower thing, like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty, but it's a bit to upkeep. It's very
Speaker 1: expensive keeping this taj Mahal thing go on, like keeping
Speaker 1: the red for it. It It takes so much money. We're
Speaker 1: kind of looking to offload it. You think it's pretty right.
Speaker 1: You look like you got some money. Do you wanna?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know we we could sell this to
Speaker 1: you if you're willing to put down a down payment
Speaker 1: right now, like this could be yours. You can make
Speaker 1: all of this tourism money a little bit upkeep and
Speaker 1: it will be profitable again. Um. And it just works
Speaker 1: a bunch. Yeah, this works a bunch. Um. And he
Speaker 1: also at some point sells the Indian House of Parliament,
Speaker 1: and most versions of the story sell say he sells
Speaker 1: it complete with parliamentarians. I honestly have no idea what
Speaker 1: that can mean. Um, maybe that like, yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. There's so many stories about this guy.
Speaker 1: He definitely con some rich people into buying the taj
Speaker 1: Mahal all in the red Fort and some other I
Speaker 1: don't know about the parliament thing. There's just not enough
Speaker 1: to tails about it, or at least not that I
Speaker 1: can find in English. I mean, you gotta respect conning
Speaker 1: dumb rich people. It's it's it's beautiful. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you get a Bollywood movie made about Yeah. So depending
Speaker 1: on where you read about nat War Lal, you'll either
Speaker 1: hear that he had ten successful jail breaks. At the
Speaker 1: Firing of Things sixty in nineteen four, he was caught again,
Speaker 1: this time because he literally bumped into the director of
Speaker 1: police for the city of Indoor at a train station.
Speaker 1: He was arrested and charged for three pending cases in
Speaker 1: that city and sentenced to twenty six years in prison.
Speaker 1: So he was supposed to be like this. The story
Speaker 1: of this escape is he was supposed to be transferred
Speaker 1: from luck Now to the old Delhi rail station and
Speaker 1: there was a big crowd at the station because he's
Speaker 1: famous and they all want to see this famous Khan
Speaker 1: man get led away to prison. So he's also a
Speaker 1: kind of a sicker old man at this point, and
Speaker 1: he asks the soldier guarding him to get a medicine
Speaker 1: pill from like to go get like, like, I don't
Speaker 1: have any money, I need you to go to the
Speaker 1: pharmacy nearby and pick up some medicine because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm sick right now. Uh, And I'll pay you guys
Speaker 1: back later um. And the soldier goes to get the medicine,
Speaker 1: and a couple of cops stand there to guard him
Speaker 1: while the soldiers gone. Um, and then that Wila asked
Speaker 1: one of the cops to go get water for him. Um.
Speaker 1: And then while like so eventually basically sends each of
Speaker 1: these guys away, one after the other, and then just
Speaker 1: like fucking runs off, goes into the crowd and escapes
Speaker 1: and all three of the policeman It's probably he just
Speaker 1: bribes them again. Like, none of the versions of this
Speaker 1: escape make much sense. I think he's paying these guys off.
Speaker 1: The talks money talks, and I think that yeah, and
Speaker 1: the con man walks, and he walks again. He was
Speaker 1: finally caught for the last time in the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: and he was well into his eighties at this point.
Speaker 1: He goes to trial and he's brought before a judge,
Speaker 1: who clearly somewhat star struck, asks him how he convinced
Speaker 1: so many successful people to part with their money. Now,
Speaker 1: wil replies, your honnor, I charge a fee to teach people.
Speaker 1: Give me a hundred rupees that I will be glad
Speaker 1: happy to tell you this secret of how I caught him.
Speaker 1: So the judge. The judge hands him the money and
Speaker 1: that Alo smiles and tells him that's how you do it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, everybody likes him, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if baffled that after the movie came out,
Speaker 1: he was still able to calm people. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: movie didn't tell any of his real cons like oh
Speaker 1: but but but yeah, he had something like sixty different aliases.
Speaker 1: He's he's disguising himself and sight he will usually find
Speaker 1: out later. I got I got by net Warlow, you know,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I don't know. Yeah, I can't confirm
Speaker 1: that the story with the judge is true. I found
Speaker 1: it on a blog, but it's clearly it's a story
Speaker 1: that I found on a couple of sketchy blogs. So
Speaker 1: it's a story people tell about him, you know, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's a legend at this point. He's
Speaker 1: he's a folk hero in India. You know. He's definitely
Speaker 1: a real guy, definitely conned to people. Hard to say
Speaker 1: exactly what he did. He's like the ASoP. He's like
Speaker 1: the ASoP of of Indian con He escaped for the
Speaker 1: last time in nineteen nineties six, when he was being
Speaker 1: taken to the hospital again He was wheelchair bound at
Speaker 1: this point, and he wound up again at the Delhi
Speaker 1: train station, so he shouldn't have been able to escape,
Speaker 1: but he did. And I found a contemporary India Today
Speaker 1: article that explained in as much detail as I've been
Speaker 1: able to find, how Warlow eighty four, who had been
Speaker 1: brought up from Kanpoor Jail to the Jet Capitals All
Speaker 1: India Institute of Medical Sciences for a checkup, seized his
Speaker 1: chance when only the jail sweeper was left to guard him.
Speaker 1: After the policeman went to deposit his wheelchair, he asked
Speaker 1: for tea, and when the sweeper went to get a cup,
Speaker 1: he's simply vanished. We don't know when nat Warloal died.
Speaker 1: His brother claims nineteen ninety six. His lawyer claims two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. He was eighty four during his last prison escape,
Speaker 1: so he's certainly deaf. Eighty four. He doesn't get caught again,
Speaker 1: so he dies a free man. You know, I respect
Speaker 1: that so much. You gotta respect the guy, I mean,
Speaker 1: old man. Yeah, and he still doesn't it still got it?
Speaker 1: I respect that. What a hero. You gotta respect that Warlow,
Speaker 1: at least based on honestly the fact that we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure, just enhances the legendariness. Absolutely. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: you get two different people who should know the truth,
Speaker 1: telling different stories. Well, Sharie, and that's the end of
Speaker 1: our quick little tale about not Warlow. How are you feeling?
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for the last I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you I said this last time last time as far
Speaker 1: as like the previous episode that we just did, but
Speaker 1: I'm it's very These ones were fun. You know, every
Speaker 1: time we do the show, I'm low key terrified because
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound dumb. But also last time, no,
Speaker 1: two times ago it was it was very intense time,
Speaker 1: but this was so fun. I almost want to come
Speaker 1: back again. Next time it's gonna be like genocide or
Speaker 1: child molestation or child molesting genociders. Um, I will promise
Speaker 1: you that. All right, friends and enemies follow you on
Speaker 1: the interwebs, right, Um, well, you can follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram and Twitter if you like. My Instagram is Shiro
Speaker 1: Hero s h E E R O A p r
Speaker 1: oh and then uh Twitter is shier Hero six six
Speaker 1: persons thant give enough Shero Hero yet? But also I
Speaker 1: kind of I'm leading into the six six six. I
Speaker 1: like it so yeah, yeah, it's it's now's the time
Speaker 1: if there's any Also, by Strains, a book of poetry.
Speaker 1: Thanks Amazon. I don't want to support Amazon, so if
Speaker 1: you want a coffee, you can like vendle me something
Speaker 1: and I can send you a PDF. But I'm working
Speaker 1: on another one right now. Hopefully I can publish this
Speaker 1: scene hopefully. Anyway, thanks again, imm