While the phenomenal growth of telecommunications in India is often attributed to deregulation, the other side of the coin is the equally massive spread of crony capitalism based on scams and corrupt practices. These scandals are a consequence of poor regulatory oversight and deliberate manipulation of policies and norms to favour select privately-owned corporate entities. The most brazen of these scandals pertains to the questionable manner in which mobile spectrum was priced and allocated under the former communications minister Andimuthu Raja. This article traces the history of telecom scams in India and explains the nature of the present 2G corruption.