Lalit Modi  is not the first, and definitely not the last businessperson who rode a large wave, milked their connections and made their money. I am not even sure Modi even plays cricket.

The American equivalent of Lalit Modi would be Don King the flamboyant and always controversial boxing promoter. Given below is a list of other infamous people Lalit Modi is in the company of. I should also tell you that each of these people rode the wave of their time (such as the 20-20 cricket wave), managed to get plenty of media coverage, some became binafide media darlings before the truth came out.

1. Sant Singh Chatwal: NRI hotelier. Milked his closeness to the Clintons to riches in America and a Padma award in 2010 in India. Charge-sheeted by the CBI in a fraud case.

2. Ramalingam Raju, Satyam: Milked more than Rs. 5000 crore out of a pioneering IT outsourcing firm.
3. Sanjay Aggarwal: Director of Home Trade Limited. Got Sachin Tendulkar and other famous people to do ads for his financial services portal. Took money from many people. faces 21 criminal cases in India
4. Rajendra Sethia: In the Guinness book of world records as the world's biggest personal bankruptcy case. Lost more than 170 million pounds, most of it owed to several Indian banks.
5. Ketan Parekh: Kingpin of the 2000-01 Indian stock market scam.
6. Rita Singh: Head of the Mesco group. Scammed Rs 300 crore out of investors. Ran for the Loksabha elections on a Congress ticket in 1998.
7. Vinay Rai: Chairman of Usha India. Siphoned off Rs 450 crore using a web of 250 companies during 1997-2000.
8. Rajan Pillai: Biscuit King, who was reportedly facing 'criminal proceedings' in Singapore. Died in Tihar jail, at age 47 under mysterious circumstances in 1995. He was sick (cirhosis of liver) but no care was given. Had a long-going feud with Nusli Wadi.
9. CR Bhansali: Raised 1100 cr and 'made it vanish into thin air'. Arrested in 1997. Now out of jail.
10. Harshad Mehta: The original stock market scam artist, who threatened to take down the PM Narsimha Rao with him. Died at early age of 44.
11. Subroto Roy: Founder of the Sahara group, the large RNBC Company. Until date, few of Sahara investments have made money. But Roy knows how to stay in the limelight and have the right political connections.
12. Abishek Verma: Flamboyant son of a Congress leader, he is your typical Delhi fixer, always seen at the big parties. CBI chargesheeted him in Naval War Room leak case.
13. Osho Rajneesh: Controversial godman who really 'made' it in United States. Mahesh Bhatt and Vinod Khanna were his disciples once. When he died, he owned 99 Rolls Royces. Osho is the prototyype for all the fraud sadhus of the world.
14. Dhirubhai Ambani: In his heydey, he took on big businessmen of his age, used his political links to Congress to destroy and conquer, creating a huge monopoly in process. His younger son, Anil Ambani is similarly flamboyant. For more, start by watching "Guru".

There are some businessmen who created a flutter during their time, some by their actions, others by their sheer timing.

Raj Kundra and Arun Naiyar are businessmen who rose to prominence by their timing and right association. Raj married Shilpa Shetty. Arun Married Liz Hurley. I am still not sure how did they make their money.

Then there Businessmen who buy their way into Parliament, directly or through proxies.

Vijay Mallya bought a whole party and got in the Rajya Sabha. Of course, we all know Vijay Mallya is the local Richard Bronson knockoff.
The Reliance people always have MPs (aka the reliance MPs) in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Moral of this article: Beware of any businessmen who is in the news?

P.S. Added new name to the list: Vijay Kumar Sharma, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of JVG group of companies who duped more than Rs, 700 crores from investors in the late 1990s. Was close to some big-time Union Ministers.

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