How to Make $ One Million in 30 Days?

Aizaz Baqir
4 min readApr 20, 2023

Here is a very interesting real life story for you:

“Sibtul Hassan Shah alias ‘Double Shah’” ( March 1964-Oct 2015) was a scam artist in Pakistan, who gained notoriety by starting and managing Ponzi scheme. Originally a school teacher and a resident of lower middle class neighbourhood in Wazirabad (a city in Punjab, Pakistan, famous for its cutlery products, and thus known as the city of cutlery and quite famous for its foods, Wazirabad is situated on the banks of the Chenab River nearly 100 kilometres north of Lahore on the Grand Trunk Road.), he was born in Koloke, a small town in a sub-district named Sambrial.

Mr. Shah had a college degree and was a science teacher in a government high school where he taught until 2005. He had also visited Dubai (U.A.E.) after taking a leave from his job and remained there for six months.

After returning from and inspired by the life in the Dubai (believed to be the third-richest country in the world, below Luxembourg at number two and Qatar at number one, with a GDP per capita of $57,744 and also known for luxury shopping malls, ultramodern architecture and a lively nightlife scene) he left his job and approached his neighbours, colleagues, and friends requesting them to give him their savings which he would return in double in just 15 days. The first person to trust him was his next door neighbour who owned a marble factory. He was followed by many of his colleagues and other people and their savings were doubled in just 15 days. This was a Ponzi Scheme (an investment operation where operator provides and generates returns for older investors through revenues paid by new investors rather than through any real production/profits) where investors were offered 100 % profit in just 15 days (later extended to 70 days). Just within months, his Ponzi scheme was at its peak when some newspaper exposed the scam in April 2006. (according to some informal reports, he had till then collected approximately Rs. 500 million or $ 5 million and a bank had reportedly even opened a branch near his house/office and people in the nearby villages and town had also started selling their movable as well as immovable assets to invest in the scheme that also resulted in property prices to sharply come down).

He was arrested by police in April 2007 (some say that even the police had invested in this scheme and arrest was actually meant to provide him safe exit from his common clients who would become enraged after government interference) on the simple charges of just Rs. 30,000 ( $ 300) robbery, while the actual looted money was far more greater than that as he was believed to have amassed more than seven billion rupees from some 14,500 affectees (or victims of scam) in just one year that was over 70 million U.S. Dollar at that time.

However, reportedly only Rs. 193 million (or $ 2 million dollars )had been returned to the affectees till 2019.

He was later sentenced to 14 years Rigorous Imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 5.4 billion (US $ 50 million) that was nearly equivalent to his total liability. However, he died in 2015 before completing his term in the jail.

Note: Another safe and apparently legal way is to

become a politician, a bureaucrat, general in army, or create an organization in the name of serving humanity; for instance, a charity hospital, a school, an NGO to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, chronic diseases like cancer etc. Mostly corrupt people will shower their ill-gotten wealth on you to become pious once again. As simple as that. And last, but not the least, become a self-help writer, a motivational speaker, or a media person breaking silly stories every now and then like, “Hamas ‘arrested’ a dolphin for being an Israeli spy”; “A Florida couple was arrested for selling tickets to heaven” or “ Prince Charles places a massive crown on his head” etc.

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Image/content source:

i) Double Shah — Wikipedia

ii) Google

v) https://peoplepill.com/people/double-shah

iv) https://www.dawn.com/news/1516540

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Aizaz Baqir
Aizaz Baqir

Written by Aizaz Baqir

I am a freelance writer and translator based in Multan, Pakistan having interests in reading, writing, travelling and social services.

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