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The Rediff Special/ V R Ramabhadran

So Who Can You Trust, Huh?

It's called the 'Bible Salesman' scam, and it's one of the oldest scams in the world.

It works like this: Imagine your father has just died, and the family has just come back from the funeral. Suddenly the door-bell rings. You open the door and there's a salesman outside. Very politely he asks for your dead father. When you tell him that he's just died, the salesman looks deeply shocked. "But he spoke to me just the other day" he says, "And he specially ordered this Bible for the family. But now that he's passed away I don't suppose you would be wanting it." The salesman turns to leave.

Hey, how can you refuse a Bible that was probably one of the old gent's last desires? You quickly stop the salesman. No, no, you'll take it, you say. Very hesitantly the salesman hands over the Bible to you. "It's a very special Bible," he tells you, "Limited edition, luxurious rexine binding, blah, blah, blah". "Okay, okay," you say, "So how much is it?" The salesman shyly quotes a price that is probably 6 times as much as the good book should have cost.

What the hell, you don't even think about it, it was the old man's last wish, after all. You hand over the amount. The salesman -- or, rather, con man -- thanks you politely, offers his sympathies once again, and departs.

How could you know that your father never ordered the Bible? (He's dead now, after all.) What the con man's did was to check the obituaries column each morning, and then land up on the doorstep of each likely sounding prospect and con the dead man's family into buying the book at several times the actual price.

It's a neat scam. And the last person -- the very last person -- you'd expect to play it on you is your trusted family chartered accountant. But that is precisely what happened to me recently.

My father died suddenly and I went home to sort out all his matters. One of the various things I had to do was to attend to his taxes. The CA was an old family friend. My father had known him for over 30 years. We called him Uncle. He and his wife had often come home (and vice versa). It was that kind of relationship.

When we finally finished all the tax matters for the year, he pulled out a bill from his drawer and handed it to me. It was for his annual fee. I promised to send him a cheque. He then pulled out another bill and, slightly apologetically, handed it to me as well. What was this? "Oh, your father hadn't settled his account with us for the last 4 years," he said, "He owed us Rs 6,000."

To cut a long -- and sordid -- story short, I ultimately discovered that it was just the old Bible Salesman scam that the CA was trying to pull on me. And I very nearly fell for it. I nearly sent him the cheque, but some strange impulse made me dig out my father's my father's old, dusty bank records and patiently hunt through them. There were no arrears, I discovered; my father had been paying his bills regularly, every year. I had the cheque numbers and dates to prove it.

When I phoned the CA and told him, he said it could be a mistake. (Mistake? C'mon, pal, well-known firms of chartered accountants don't make this kind of mistake.) He said he'd check up and get back to me. And that's the last I heard from him.

Just imagine, the trusted old family CA tries out one of the oldest cons in the book on me. And all for the relatively piddly sum of Rs 6,000. (Which is probably the saddest part of all.) I am deeply, deeply upset. So who can you trust today? Who the hell can you trust?

Jeffrey Archer has this theory that there are four people you must cultivate as your personal friends: your doctor, your lawyer, your share-broker, and your CA. Well, doctor, lawyer, share-broker, maybe. But I myself am currently dubious about the CA part

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