Naive Travelers Pay $200 for Snack in India

by Josh Lew on

It’s one of those tricks you learn in “How to Rip off Travelers 101”: act friendly, provide food or a service and then reveal that you are charging an exorbitant price. The traveler is at a disadvantage because they have already used the service or eaten the food. In general, they will pay all, or at least a major portion, of the price you are asking.

This is what happened to a Dutch couple recently in the Indian state of Bihar. They enjoyed some samosas (spicy, fried dumpling-like snacks), which usually cost well under $1 ($1=49 rupees). When they were finished, the proprietor of the market stall demanded payment of 10,000 rupees (just over $200). He claimed that the samosas were made with rare herbs that were natural aphrodisiacs. After arguing, the couple paid. It was an expensive but valuable lesson, right? Except that the couple went to the local police station and complained. The police made the samosa-maker return the money, except for 10 rupees, the actually price of the snacks.

[Via Reuters]

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Update: Back from the grave

by Jerry Guo on

I wrote last Friday about the bizarre events unfolding in England, where a lost kayaker walked into a police station claiming amnesia, more than five years after he was assume dead.

Here’s the conclusion. Over the weekend, he was formally arrested for life insurance fraud and making false statements to obtain a passport. His wife was arrested on fraud charges. The 57-year-old man could face up to 10 years in prison. As I alluded to last week, the motive here was a $50,000 life insurance policy and a get-out-of-debt card worth $260,000, when the man disappeared and his wife claimed he was dead.

Turned out they’ve been living together since Feb 2003. But apparently life on the lam isn’t all that glamorous, though they’ve been to Cyprus, Gibraltar, and Panama. The husband got itchy with his secret life (in other words, pretending to be dead) that he wanted to fly to Kansas to live with a woman he met on the Internet.

The story has a very sad ending indeed. Their two adult children say they want nothing to do with their bum parents and this “huge scam.”