The story of Haryana's 21-year-old crorepati who never was is a cautionary tale for every youth who aspires to strike it rich.

If you read the newspapers this past fortnight, you may have come across a remarkable rags-to-riches story. "21-year-old Virender Raika has been offered whopping Rs. 4.85 crore annual package by software giant Microsoft," read one piece of copy.

The story went on to explain that Raika had developed an "extraordinary anti-hacking software", which had attracted the attention of the world's largest software firm. Raika had apparently even presented this software to a team at Microsoft's Hyderabad office, which included Peter Klein. Klein was reportedly so impressed that he decided to make him an offer on the spot.

Raika's extraordinary story was first reported by The Tribune newspaper on 13th May. It was re-printed the next day by 'Jago Punjab, Jago India', which bills itself as "Punjab's 1st investigative e-paper". The Daily Bhaskar and Hindustan Times reported it on the same day. It even found its way 9 days later, into a Business Standard op-ed on the liberal discourse around Narenda Modi. In it, Malavika Sangghvi praised Raika for not sitting 'around commenting on matters of national import and political discourse' and 'getting on with his life'.

The only problem of course is none of it is true. Three small details in the Tribune's story caught my eye and had wondering about the legitimacy of this story. First, Microsoft doesn't just hand out 4.85 crore rupee offers to 21-year-olds; not least because that's just under what Bill Gates earned in base pay as the company's Chief Software Architect.

Second, having reported intermittently on cyber-security, I can tell you there is no such thing as 'hacker-proof software'. If a 21-year-old had indeed cobbled together this chimerical piece of code, it would have been much bigger news.

Third, Peter Klein. He did indeed serve as Microsoft's CFO, as the story suggests, but he resigned last month after working at the company for more than a decade. There's also the small matter that he was based out of Microsoft's Redmond Headquarters, not its Hyderabad office.

Still, I asked Microsoft if they could corroborate the report. Here's the response in full.

"Reference to the recent articles in some media publications about Microsoft extending an employment offer to Mr. Virender Raika, we would like to clarify that Microsoft has not made any such job offer to Mr. Raika. On the face of it, this seems to be a case where he has been misled by a person or group who falsely claimed to represent Microsoft.

While this is an unfortunate turn of events, we are aware of other similar instances that have occurred in the past. In response to one such incident, we have published a notice on the Microsoft India Careers website to make aware and warn candidates about individuals/organizations claiming to act Microsoft's behalf and giving out false information and job offers. The notice is here: http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/in/home.aspx."

The unfortunate thing about being duped is that Mr Raika does appear to be a genuinely hard-working young man. His biography in the Tribune says he had to take on two jobs - as a hawker and a physics tutor - after his father fell ill. Worse, despite topping his class 10 exams, and passing the grueling Joint-Entrance Exam, he had to forego an IIT education (not the most expensive) because he couldn't afford the cost.

Mr Raika's work ethic will certainly be an asset at any organisation. And, if his anti-hacking system is any good, who knows, a patent on it may earn him riches well beyond the Microsoft offer that never was.