Life School of Hard Knocks: How Not to get Conned

By Tom Payyappilly

In this book, Tom recounts various incidents in his life when he or someone close to him was duped by someone or there was a breach of trust. He gives examples of experiences in personal finance, business transactions, dealings with friends and relatives, etc. Getting tricked does not necessarily mean something illegal happened. Both types of examples are given –legal and illegal, but the net result is the same: “innocent or unwitting” people end up losing. A few examples are also given, where he did not allow himself to be cheated, after learning the hard way in prior experiences.
The author’s goal is to let readers, especially young, inexperienced people, who are just entering the world as adults and maybe vulnerable to be exploited by unscrupulous people, get forewarned of potential pitfalls they should try to avoid if possible. He wrote this book, primarily as a way of educating his own daughter, but then felt it might be useful for others also, so decided to publish it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Payyappilly
• Release date: Dec 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005192778

Tom Payyappilly

Tom Payyappilly is a computer engineer who has worked in the software industry for over two decades. He currently lives in California, USA, and works for a large semiconductor company. He has been granted more than 100 patents worldwide in the telecommunications field. He writes part-time on world issues, philosophy and other matters of interest to him.

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Life School of Hard Knocks: How Not to Get Conned

Ajith Tom Payyappilly

Published by Ajith Tom Payyappilly

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2020 Ajith Tom Payyappilly

[Case #1-10016725011 at US Copyright office]

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Introduction

1997: Bangalore, India-The Rental Car Incident

1997: San Diego, CA-Our First Car

1998: San Diego, CA-Our First Home Purchase

2001: San Diego, CA-Our Second Home Purchase

2000: San Diego, CA-Our Second Car Purchase

2003: San Diego, CA-The Ponzi Scheme

1997: San Diego, CA-My First Job Offer in U.S.A

1989: Kerala, India-The Computer Coaching Institute

1982: Kuwait-The Guitar

1994: Madras, India-The Cult

1987: Kerala, India-My Parents’ Final Home

1981: Kerala, India-My Father’s Dream Home

2009: Kerala, India-The Land of my Ancestors

1981: Kerala, India-The Printing Press

1972-1987: Kuwait-The Apartment I grew up in

1984: Kuwait-The attempted Kidnapping

1994: Shanghai, China-The Last Massage

Conclusion

About The Author

About This Book

Introduction

The reason I decided to write this book is because this year Fall 2020, my daughter entered high school as a ninth-grade freshman. My wife remarked at the dinner table last night that we have less than four years left with my daughter being at home. After that, she will leave for college and then into the big bad world. It struck me that although four years may seem a lot; there is so little time to teach her all the lessons in life that I have learnt the hard way. So, I decided to write a series of books on different topics that she can refer to even in future, after I am no longer a part of her daily life. And in the process, it may prove useful for other people also.

In this book I give a series of examples from my own life where I or someone very close to me ended up getting a raw deal in some transaction or event, and the lessons that can be drawn from each incident. There are also a few examples given, when I did not allow myself to be duped or there was a narrow escape, sometimes due to hard won lessons from prior experience. It is for a reason the phrase was coined: get older and wiser. I would not allow those incidents that happened during my younger days to happen now, since I am older and wiser. But that does not help a young person like my daughter whose life is just beginning, unless she hears about these before hand and know to protect herself. Getting tricked or cheated is nothing new, it existed from the dawn of human history. In fact, the Bible is full of stories of such happenings, starting with Cain and Abel! Therefore, none of the lessons and conclusions I list in this book is going to be new. However, although I changed the names of people to protect their privacy, the specific incidents were true stories that really happened to me or people, I know first-hand. Therefore, I hope my daughter will find it easier to relate to these stories and she will pay more attention to them than while reading about events in a fictitious story or a history book, because there tends to be an attitude of those sorts of things only happen to other people! Initially, I the title I gave to this book was How not to get conned!, but later I decided to change the title to better reflect the fact that not all the incidents narrated involved an individual or entity maliciously trying to cheat me or my family, (though the majority may indeed be just that). Some incidents were just hard lessons that could happen to anyone because of the way the ‘system’ or ‘society’ functions. It is not any one person’s fault. In a nutshell, my goal of this book is to educate innocent people how not to be naïve and instead arm themselves (figuratively) so they can protect themselves from the conmen of this world. If even a single person benefits from this book and avoids a danger to himself/herself, it would have been well worth my effort. Let me state some age-old proverbs / famous sayings below. The rest of this book recounts my own life experiences which prove these proverbs are right after all.

A fool and his money soon get separated.

Where there is honey, there will be flies.

When evil meets innocence, there is usually a bad outcome for innocence.

Better safe than sorry.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Knowledge is power.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Do not trust strangers.

1997: Bangalore, India – The Rental Car Incident

I decided to start off with this episode because in my mind, it was one of the most tension filled incidents for me, even though it was not the one where I lost the most money in absolute terms. But it was a coming-of-age experience for me, when I transitioned from a naïve young man to an adult who is wary of strangers.

The year was 1997. I was 24 years old, had finished college the previous year and was just approaching a year in my first job at a large, multinational software company in Bangalore, which was the Silicon Valley of India. That decade of the 1990s was when the Information Technology (IT) /Sofware revolution took off in India. There were many big forces at work – globalization, economic liberalization of India, India becoming an IT superpower, the advent of the Internet, etc Bangalore was at the epicenter of these changing times in India. The whole way of life of people was changing from being a traditional, conservative society to people having a culturally liberal outlook. Young software professionals were in huge demand, both for working in the local and multinational companies that were setting up shop in Bangalore, as well as for being sent around the world as consultants on temporary months-long assignments. There was a shortage of software engineers and therefore we could command huge salaries, and there were bidding wars among companies for hiring the best talent. Not everyone was happy about this though. The older generation who had lived in Bangalore for decades found themselves being priced out of their own city, due to the influx of newcomers. Also, since IT and software itself was a new field, the people employed in these industries- software professionals were typically young, many of them new graduates from college. They used to get salaries their parents, who had spent decades of back breaking work, could only dream about. Housing, transportation, the general cost of living went sky high. To make a long story short, it was very exciting times to be in Bangalore. Every week we would hear of a new multinational company starting a branch office there or a new world-famous retail brand or fast-food chain coming to town.

So, there I was, a young man with a newly minted computer engineering degree in hand, in the most desirable city to be in India, waiting to conquer the world. I had just got married and my wife and I had moved into a nice little apartment in an apartment community that was originally built for air force personnel. This apartment complex was on the outskirts of the city since we could not afford anything closer to the center of the city where our offices were located. (well in those days our apartment’s neighborhood was outside of the core of the city; in the present day it would be in the heart of the city since Bangalore has grown so much in the last quarter century). Our apartment complex was like an oasis. Inside it was very clean and well maintained. But if one stepped outside the gates of the complex one could really see what it was like to live in a crowded Third World country. It was crowded, dusty and poverty could be seen everywhere. Stray dogs used to roam the streets, looking for pieces of discarded meat or bones thrown from the numerous butcher shops that lined the streets. There were peddlers, beggars, pickpockets, it was not very safe after dark to be out of public sight in the alleys. The main road leading to the complex was a dirt road, with potholes the size of ponds. My wife’s cousin and her husband used to visit us occasionally on weekends and he had a brand-new car that he was terrified of driving to our home, because of the terrible condition of the roads. In a way, it was good that we did not own a car or motorbike of our own and we used to commute via public transportation. The bus system was used extensively by residents of Bangalore, as in other cities of India.

Some firms, like my wife’s used to send a company bus to pick up and drop off their employees to save their employees the hassle of using public transportation. Unfortunately, my company did not. So, every morning, around 8am, I would wait for a bus to take me to the city. The buses used to be extremely crowded, the legendary stories you hear about Indian commuters literally dangling outside the bus, since the inside is jam packed, and hanging on to dear life with the help of the handlebars of the doors or with the help of their fellow commuters is true. I have witnessed it first-hand. It would take an hour and a half for me to reach office around 9:30 am after changing a bus in a hub within the city. In the evenings, I would wait for the rush hour to die down a bit and leave late in the evening after 8pm to go back home.

The bus-stop was right outside our apartment complex. Every morning while waiting for the bus, I used to see a well-dressed, good looking young chap about the same age as me, also from our complex waiting for the same bus that I was waiting for. So, we started saying hello and small talk while waiting for the bus. A few days later, he proposed that we stop taking the bus and instead pool together and ride in something called an autorickshaw, which is sort of like a taxicab, except that it has only three wheels and is slower, and only meant for travel within a city. It is not powerful enough to be used extensively on freeways. It is common in some Asian countries. In India, it is very popular for short distance commutes, as it is much cheaper than an actual taxicab. It is more expensive than a bus, but because the two of us were going to be pooling together and splitting the bill, it seemed like a good idea to me. We did that for a month, and everything went well. It was much less exhausting than the crowded bus ride and we saved a lot of time too. We got to know each other’s background. His name was Jerome, he had also finished his college education a year or two earlier, and was working in a small firm, in the same area of town as my own workplace. He was still living with his parents in our apartment complex and his Dad used to work for the Air Force. He was polite and well mannered, so I figured he must have had a good upbringing.

After about a couple of months of this carpooling arrangement, he requested me for a favor one day. He said his boss was out of town for a few weeks and some clients were coming to town, whom he was entrusted to entertain. He needed a rental car for the weekend starting Friday, but the company credit card was with his boss and since he did not have a personal credit card, would it be possible for me to do it for him. I know in the present day 2020, no one would agree to such a request, as it seems so obviously fishy. However, back in 1997, the concept of credit cards was a novel thing in India. The concept of a rental car that one can drive without a chauffer as in a taxi was also novel in India. Remember it had only been four or five years since India’s economy was privatized. Until then, it was all public sector companies, so people did not have much experience with how private companies worked, and everything Jerome said seemed plausible. Added to all that, was my own lack of experience as I was only a year old in the working world. And I was naïve and willing to please everyone. It now seems mind-numbingly stupid that I agreed to his request. He took the rental car, using my credit card.

On Monday morning, I did not find him in the morning, so I just took the bus on my own. This was not an uncommon thing. It was not like we carpooled every single day. Our agreement was that whenever we found each other waiting for the bus in the mornings, we would get into an autorickshaw on demand. But there were many days when one of us had to get to work earlier than usual or later than usual or out sick or anything else that it was not an uncommon occurrence for us to travel on our own. But I did not find him the rest of the week either. I just wanted