What to do when confronted by a scammer while travelling

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 1 year ago

What to do when confronted by a scammer while travelling

By Sue Williams
Illustration: Jamie Brown

Illustration: Jamie Brown

The kids crowded around me, pleading for food and money, and holding sheets of cardboard scrawled with messages in every language that they jabbed into my ribs.

"OK, OK," I yelled above the melee in a back street in Rome, scouring the sea of cardboard for the note in English. "Back off, and I'll see what I can do."

But by then, of course, it was too late to help. They'd already, expertly, helped themselves. They'd undone my bum bag, taken out everything of value and also gone through my pockets under cover of that carefully constructed cardboard skirt.

Dissecting the incident later, I realise I should have trusted my instincts. If something doesn't feel right, then it probably isn't. I should have acted immediately, shouted or screamed and got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

The difficulty is that, for most of us, such behaviour doesn't come naturally. When we're travelling overseas, we're at pains to be polite, to be curious about unfamiliar customs or conduct, and not to ascribe to malice – to misquote Hanlon's razor – that which could be adequately explained by being peculiarly foreign.

But while that's all very admirable, it's trumped every time by the first of travel's hard and fast rules: self-preservation.

The best way to outwit con artists I've found, over years of being duped, is to believe in yourself and your own judgment, even as others are assaulting it.

I was once on a bus in Rio when two men came on and started shouting that I'd stolen the bag on my lap from them. My immediate response was confusion and my first reflex action, in normal circumstances, would have been to show them the bag and patiently explain to them how long I'd owned it and that they must be mistaken.

Instead, I trusted my instincts and curled up in a ball over it. As they tried to wrest it out of my grip. Eventually, other passengers came to my aid.

Advertisement

There are, of course, thousands of different, and quite ingenious, cons you can fall victim to, but this strategy of having faith in yourself, while not failsafe, does help.

When a beggar handed me a baby in a street in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, I resisted holding it dumbly – presumably so co-conspirators could fleece me while my attention was drawn. I lay the child carefully on the ground and walked off.

When a passer-by pressed a packet in my hand of what could have been cannabis in post-Schapelle Bali, I didn't wait to check. I dropped it as if it was scalding me before mock police could come and demand a bribe.

Of course, there are always expert con artists around, and tourists who are too relaxed, tired or confused – or all three – who'll provide good pickings.

If you are ripped off, the important lesson is to forgive yourself, assume the thief needed your possessions more than you, get your credit cards or cash replaced, fill in a police report for an insurance claim and move on. Never let it blight the rest of your trip.

Sign up for the Traveller newsletter

The latest travel news, tips and inspiration delivered to your inbox. Sign up now.

Most viewed on Traveller

Loading