Abdul Karim Telgi (born 29 July 1961 – 23 October 2017) was a convicted Indian counterfeiter.
He earned money by printing counterfeit stamp paper in India, with the size of the scam estimated to be around inr 300000000000.
Telgi's mother was Shariefabee Ladsaab Telgi, and his father was an employee of Indian Railways.
His father died while he was young.
Telgi paid for his education at Sarvodaya Vidyalaya Khanapur, an English medium school, by selling fruits and vegetables on trains.
He later studied at Gogte College of Commerce, Belgaum.
1984
He completed his B.Com in 1984.
Eventually, he moved to the Gulf, Saudi Arabia.
Seven years later, he returned to India, where he began a counterfeiting career, originally focusing on fake passports.
He started a business to export manpower to Saudi Arabia and opened a company, Arabian Metro Travels at New Marine Lines.
He used to create several fake documents that would facilitate laborers' smooth passage at the airport even if their passport had an ECR (emigration check required) stamp or other issues that could raise red flags for immigration officials.
This practice was called "pushing" in the parlance of manpower exporters.
Telgi moved to more complex counterfeiting when he began to counterfeit stamp paper.
He appointed 300 people as agents who sold the fakes to bulk purchasers, including banks, insurance companies, and stock brokerage firms.
The size of the scam was estimated to be around inr 300000000000 One aspect of the scandal that caused much concern was that it required the involvement of many police officers and other government employees including Nikhil Kothari, an Assistant Police Investigator who was found to have a net worth of over inr 1000000000, despite making a salary of only inr 9000 per month.
Several police officers were implicated in the case.
Pradip Sawant, then Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Branch, Mumbai, was discharged but subsequently reinstated after being found innocent.
Then police officer S M Mushrif, known for the book Who killed Karkare took decisive measures in this case.
