The tourist scam that actually worked

There was an oddly tense grave atmosphere at Backpackers Travellers Inn in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when my new traveler friends and I returned from dinner. I had no idea how strange and late this evening would turn out to be.

A Japanese lady had checked in, and she was acting highly agitated. The woman only spoke Japanese so the guy working the desk asked us (I lived in Japan, and my dinner companions were all Japanese) to go up to her room and check on her.

KL’s streets are quite friendly, but keep your guard up.

It turns out that the woman, traveling alone until her husband joins her in a few days, had been scammed out of some money by a guy she met on the sidewalk on the very day she arrived in Kuala Lumpur. Shame-faced, she told us the story.

Details of the scam

Walking along the street between Chinatown and Little India, the woman was approached by a local guy who spoke some Japanese. He said his friend was visiting Japan and would love to meet her; she agreed to get in the guy’s car and go to his house.

Already I was dumbfounded: who gets into a stranger’s car in a strange new city?! I know Japan is very safe and can inspire an overdeveloped sense of trust – but getting into a stranger’s car? That would be bizarre even in Japan.

It gets worse though.

At the guy’s house was another guy and a woman; the supposed Japan-visiting friend would be coming later. After some small talk someone suggested they play a card game.

(If your blood turned cold at that sentence, congratulations: you have basic common sense. You probably wouldn’t have ended up at this guy’s house in the first place.)

The game involved betting money, and the woman went along with it. And why not; she was winning! At first anyway; she soon started losing. Confound the luck.

Soon she had handed over quite a lot of cash, but still owed them hundreds of dollars. She realized she had to make an ATM run.

Sound crazy? It happened.

She and the gang all rode to an ATM so she could withdraw the rest of “their” money, and it was at this point that finally (finally!) she started to get suspicious. Feigning trouble with her card, she told them where she was staying and told them to come by later for the remainder of their winnings. They agreed and she returned to the hostel.

That’s why she was in such a tizzy. The embarrassment and financial drain of this scam was overwhelming her.

By now it was 11:00 pm and the scammers, wisely, hadn’t shown up. But not only was this woman ashamed, but she worried what her husband would say. She also decided she needed to file a police report, and I offered to accompany her to the tourist police office. It was located next to the Petronas Towers.

It was my first time seeing the towers — I’ve only been in town a few days myself. They were all lit up, and were quite a spectacle. I couldn’t stay and admire them, though; we had some unpleasant business to take care of.

The police woman was friendly, but only spoke Malaysian and English. I translated between them the best I could. Forty-five minutes later, the woman had her police report, typed out in Malaysian.

There wasn’t much the police could do, of course; the woman couldn’t remember where the people’s house was, only that it was “near other buildings with roofs”. And she had, after all, willingly gone with them and willingly gambled with them – improbably naive as that may sound.

(Incidentally, there was another traveler at the police station, a young guy whose wallet had been stolen. Just like that, his cash, credit cards, travelers checks, and passport were all gone. He was extremely distraught – it seemed like his whole trip might be at an end. I really felt for him. Poor guy.)

The police offered to give us a lift back to the hostel, and a young male officer sped haphazardly through the lighted but empty, winding backstreets. It felt like he was playing a video game and wanted to see how fast he could take curves without flying off the road. At what point do you criticize the reckless driving of a free ride? I kept quiet and held on tight to the door handle.

The woman and I sloshed around the back seat, getting back to the hostel about 1:00 am. She thanked me profusely, and the next day we went to a planetarium and astronomy museum to take her mind off it. I hoped I could give her a better welcome to Kuala Lumpur than she had gotten so far. By the time her husband joined her I had moved on to another hostel, so I don’t know how he took the news. The scammers, as far as I know, never came for the money.

Have you ever seen a scam while traveling? I couldn’t believe the gullibility of this woman, but I know people can be trusting and disoriented on the road. Tell me if you have heard of (or been part of) a scam while traveling.

And always be careful and suspicious about friendly strangers who want to gamble with you!

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