The Ghaziabad Conman - Part 1

First, a little side-show

In the many years that this blog has existed and criticised the corrupt media, anti-Hindu forces and many corrupt public figures, it had become a catchy brand-name in social media. Consequently, the handle @MediaCrooks on Twitter produced many duplicates and imitators. Most of these were/are innocent and trying to cash-in on a known handle and didn’t cause any damage to anyone. Some had different “variations” of the Mediacrooks name:

All this was fine till Twitter suspended my original handle in May 2018. Immediately, in the same month, a fraudulent, duplicate handle “@Mediacrooks3” (No.3) became active. This handle started copy-pasting many of my tweets from my second handle. That didn’t bother me much either. But then, this No.3 not only started claiming it was me, it started abusing and targeting some people who exposed it as a fake. No.3 not only fooled a few but apart from abusing some, it also made public private information of some.

Naturally, I had to hunt it down. I sought the help of a cyber expert and, unsurprisingly, the IP of this fraudulent handle No.3 was located in Delhi and was also tweeting in fake handles from this IP address. I instantly who knew it was based on the grammatical mistakes and poor language in its own tweets and had planned on legal action. However, this No.3 has since been suspended so I have let the matter rest there. Apart from me, many on Twitter now know who operated this handle and from where. So, for the time-being, I will let it pass. This is for public information and to inform that any Twitter handle of mine will be reflected on this blog.

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Introducing Conman Gaurav Pradhan

In the years of writing this blog, I have written only about media, public figures and public issues. Never have I written about SM websites or individuals on SM. This exception comes for a very strong reason because this conman Gaurav Pradhan has provided many individuals, groups, media and online sites very good reasons to do so. Nobody looks at a man’s shoes unless it’s clearly dirty. Nobody seeks proof of your education or degree on SM. Nobody looks at the public behaviour and character of a person unless he threatens many, abuses them through multiple handles and claims great power that he doesn’t possess. Firstly, let us understand the difference between a fraudster and a conman:

A fraudster defrauds by misrepresentation, cheats for financial gains. It could be ordinary forging of cheques or documents to selling cars that don’t belong to him. These are two examples. The fraudster is an opportunity-based operator, with or without prior planning and his victim can be anyone. The fraudster can be a lone-wolf or may have accomplices.

In contrast, A conman plans his operation. He plays for a long time on the emotions of his victims to gain their trust and part with their money or some resource. The Love-Jihad operator is also a conman who wins the trust of a woman first and then defrauds her. The conman’s victims invest so much trust in him that they don’t realise that they are being steadily and even repeatedly being cheated. The conman can be a single operator or a group but usually, even the single operator has some accomplices who ENDORSE his claims, his credibility etc. to others so that they get a share of the spoils. A long-term conman thus steadily builds a small army of accomplices who help him trick and cheat his victims in various forms.

That was a small explanation for a clearer understanding of important terms. So, what makes this guy Gaurav Pradhan a “Conman”? Many things. Firstly, on social media, GP goes by the title of “Doctor” and his Twitter handle is @DrGPradhan and his FB page also claims “DrGPradhan”. I don’t think he’s a medical doctor. If he’s a doctorate through some research and thesis and has a PhD degree, nobody knows on what and from which university. He never answers the question “Doctorate in what and from which university” to anyone. Why is this important? Because people use titles to con people without actually possessing them. Many AAP MLAs were caught with fake degrees. If the guy wasn’t a conman, nobody would give a damn if he claimed being a doctor or a rocket-scientist. In his current Twitter profile GP is everything from data scientist to a pilot. This has changed a bit from all the companies he mentioned in his previous profiles (which are with me on record).

GP claims to have a “network” of intel agents and knows everything from what’s going with CIA, ISI, Pak and even what goes on in the bedrooms of Sagarika Ghose, Rana Ayyub and other media women. Some weeks back, I had threatened to expose GP thoroughly in a series of blogs. And whenever he faces a backlash, GP behaves like a wimp, cries like a Pappu, seeks hugs from his followers and sometimes other things. It wasn’t different this time either:

So, the wimp wants to become a “monk”. He wants to relocate to the hills and from a dark, hilly road (?) tweets at 2.46am in the morning. Well, you would be right if you made a wild guess that this coward conman went nowhere but was losing sleep at his home or at the home of his “sidekick” in Delhi. You see, like any other terrible conman, this GP also makes a lot of “clerical mistakes”. The guy is married and everyone on SM knows that. In the tweet starting his journey at 2.35pm on August 24 to the hills, he grandly claims he is travelling with his “GF”. Well, I don’t know if he calls his wife “GF” or his vehicle or he really has some other GF. Not my business, but this is how conmen often stumble and bumble on their way to stupidity. I can smell a rat from a million miles – and I could see that GP was nothing but a stupid conman from his first interaction with me:

Cheapster cannot afford a book priced at around INR 300. Back then, this blog had more than 10 million views and my Twitter handle had four times more followers than this guy. Yet, he would “take it to the world”. The “Pompous Rat” was visible even in these mild exchanges. But there was worse to come from this conman. This time, he fooled thousands of people:

Everyone knows the fist-fight Rajdeep Sardesai was involved in at Madison Square Gardens. Suddenly, out of nowhere, this conman Pradhan jumps up and claims he has sent a notice to file a $300 Mn suit against Rajdeep for his hooliganism and violence in New York. Naturally, his idiotic followers went “Wow Wow” and GP even managed to fool some media folks like Zee TV and some rag-tag online outfits. I pointed out on Twitter that this was an outright fraudulent-drama being played out by this conman GP and that he was neither a victim nor present at the site of the incident and had absolutely no business in filing any case or claiming even $1 of damages. That apart, this conman wouldn’t have the money for the court-fee for such a damage-claim of $300 Mn dollars. Forget court fees, this conman GP did not even pay the lawyer who draft his petition:

The handle @MusicalTrees is the lawyer who drafted GP’s stupid petition but got no payment for it. That is how conman GP cheats others. Not wanting to get into a tangle of old matters, @MusicalTrees deleted some of his tweets on GP’s non-payment and in this particular tweet in above image, he sarcastically asks if some other lawyer has billed GP for his labour and services.

A petty thief

Stealing and thieving are character flaws. And petty theft is even worse. If a man is a thief by character, you post him as a constable, he will steal fines without challans. You post the same guy in an office, he will steal stationery and pins. You post him in a canteen or restaurant – he will steal food, food-grains or plates and cutlery. The nature of stealing remains, no matter where the man is. GP on social media is nothing but a petty thief stealing and posting content from Tweets and blogs of others as his own on Twitter and FB without any credit to the source. Here is his latest theft on the Kerala floods issue:

Not only has GP stolen and copy-pasted tweets, he has stolen content from the whole thread of the interaction. There are many such “Copy-paste artists” on SM but we usually ignore these things as silliness. But GP is not a one-time thief of content. He has copy-pasted more than 1000 tweets as his own and I have many of the screenshots with me on record. But this one sample will do for the story and you will find many on Twitter tweeting about his regular theft of content. But what’s the difference between mere copy-pasting and the work of a conman? Well, the conman will preach grand sermons on copying others’ tweets being a bad habit:

Still, I would consider copy-pasting tweets or content from blogs and posting on his FB site as smaller crimes that can often be ignored. Such thefts get instantly exposed on Twitter or FB itself. The reason for producing a sample here is to understand being a conman is now second-nature to GP and he nonchalantly brags and brazenly defends all his false claims of being “knowledgeable” about many issues. In one particular tweet he asks whether he should be called “James Bond” given all his spying nonsense. These are not petty acts. These are acts and claims of a schizophrenic and delusional con artist who imagines people have still not cottoned on to his silly games and swindles.

Name-dropping – The Conman’s trick

I was working with NASA and honoured with a certificate by Bill Clinton in 1996. Amitabh Bachchan once told me how much he loved my work when I met him at a Filmfare party in 1992. This is called name-dropping and if I were to blabber such nonsense to con people, I would carefully pick some idiotic, gullible people and then swindle them. Sensible people would immediately call my bluff. So, the conman picks and chooses his victims by name-dropping. Name-dropping is the trait of a cheat who is out to fool people. He also creates a fairly sizeable population of “fans” and “followers” to enable such gullible people to believe in his crap. When conman GP realised his follower-count is too low compared to many others, he did what many Congis did to boost their follower count – he either somehow got or purchased FAKE followers on Twitter to boost his count:

Inferiority complex grows in a conman when others he constantly abuses and envies have far higher follower-counts than he does. That’s how conman GP started boosting his follower-count around mid-2017. Recently, after the death of AB Vajpayee, GP claimed he had personally received a hand-written note from the great man. That is fine, he also claimed he had met 3 former PMs on their invitation. They probably want to seek his expertise on how to run the country. Of course, his gullible followers go gaga at such stupid claims. Needless to mention, GP once made tea and served ABV when the late PM visited him:

ABV is nothing. Conman GP got into the digital world because he met the Finnish telecom innovator Matti Makkonen (God knows where he met him… in Finland or the Republic of Iguana):

Makkonen was certainly far more modest and humble in also crediting others who worked on the SMS system. Conman GP probably doesn’t know, because of natural conditions and weather in Finland, their maximum effort and innovation went into mobile phones as underground or overhead cables were troublesome. But like I said before, the petty conman makes a lot of “clerical mistakes”. In the above image he pays tributes to Makkonen and how because of a meeting with him Makkonen recognised his genius and that’s why GP got into digital domain. That FB post was probably in June 2015 when Makkonen died. But lo and behold, a year later, the SMS inventor became “Dr. Mecky”:

As far as I know, there is no Dr. Mecky involved with SMS or mobiles (or any other domain?). And no one has ever referred to Makkonen by any silly name such as “Mecky”. Laughable fraud! He really doesn’t remember the name “Makkonen” and blabbers “Mecky”. Why? Because GP has never met Makkonen and none of his gullible victims would bother about all this. This guy farts through his mouth and through his writing and doesn’t even remember proper names of the people he claims to have met.

Imagine this, you meet people like AB Vajpayee or that Makkonen and you don’t publish any pictures with them to back your claims. Very simply put, the conman does not have any and will have to photoshop some pics for the gullible. Name-dropping of famous people is among the cleverest tricks the conman plays on his flock. His offices and addresses in South Africa as he claimed also turned out to be bogus:

In yet another attempt to associate with a famous name, conman GP who once praised that “encounter specialist” (Commonly called “Ab tak Chappan”) eloquently, went to meet him. He probably got thrown out and instantly screamed he had lost respect for that officer:

This is just the first part on the story of conman Gaurav Pradhan. In the upcoming parts of this series we will get much deeper into his acts relating to finances (including his other business called @MySwades), his fake PhD, his legal cases, the FIRs and court cases against him. His money-collection methods are amazing to say the least. I am writing this conman’s story in parts as a single blog would be long enough to become a whole book.

Note: Images in this post are cropped and condensed to save space. However, no content or original text has been altered in anyway. Some images may not be clear but are only for demonstrative purposes even if not fully legible.