Money Mafia is a Discovery + Original series that talks about some of the biggest scams in modern India. The length of each episode is approximately 30 minutes.
Episode 1
The first episode is about the Indian Stamp Paper Scam. Around the year 2000-01, when Abdul Karim Telgi was arrested by Bangalore Police, one of the biggest scams ever in Indian history was exposed. The estimate is more than 30 thousand crores. It is explained very well. But I think 30 minutes is not enough to dive deeply into every aspect of this type of scam. In this short amount of time you can only get surface level information.
Episode 2
It talks about Mewat becoming the new phishing capital after Jamtara. They go undercover and interview the scammers of the village. The rapid growth in digital payments after the COVID lockdown has made more people fall prey to these scams. It starts off well. But in the end it seems you have very little information left. Very few questions arise on the role of the police. Very average.
Episode 3
The popularity of instant loan apps increased when the whole of India was facing financial crisis in the COVID lockdown. You can get a loan of at least 2000 from these apps without going to the bank. As we know that banks do not give such a small amount of loan, so people start using these apps.In this episode, the dark truth behind these apps has been discussed. How they harassed you, blackmailed you and even how they stole your mobile data like your contacts, gallery etc is well described. This is the most brutal scam in recent times. People even took their own lives due to harassment after taking loans from these apps. This episode is an eye opener. I cannot believe that people committed suicide because of a loan of three thousand or a loan of ten thousand. I think this is the best episode of this series. You can feel the pain of the victims.
Episode 4
A man came and announced that he would provide phones to everyone at the cost of Rs.251 only. Yes, we all know about Freedom 251 in some way or the other. Even some of us had already booked it by paying 251. This episode is about the same Ponzi scheme. The matter is still in the judiciary so the exact result cannot be shown. Still they can show this in a better way. But they missed out on the victims, the common man. They didn’t show anything about the process of returning the money taken from the people or any discussion about it. Here they interviewed some technical experts and it seems the interviews are scripted. Some dialogues are like film dialogues. Weakest episode.
Overall it is an interesting series, but got wasted by the time limit of half an hour. It looks undercooked and under research.I can say that this is like a short summary of those scams. A deeper and more research material could have been a better thing. They also promised at least 4 more episodes. But I have no hope from them either. If you have not seen any well researched crime shows before then this will be a good start for you. It captivates you to learn more.