Scams and Cons

The Charity Donation Scam

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The Charity Donation scam was one of the first I was ever warned about on my first trip to India. The warning on that occasion related to a particular version of this over-worked technique which was based on the use of small flag pins. The tour guide warned us to be wary of smartly dressed young people trying to pin small paper flags onto us as we walked from the hotel into central Delhi. He explained that they would come up with some nonsense about collecting for an Indian national student support scheme and that if you tried to remove the flag, they’d give you a guilt-trip about ‘disrespecting’ their country’s flag before trying to hook you into giving them money. I had been going to India for more ...Read More

The Charity Donation scam was one of the first I was ever warned about on my first trip to India. The warning on that occasion related to a particular version of this over-worked technique which was based on the use of small flag pins. The tour guide warned us to be wary of smartly dressed young people trying to pin small paper flags onto us as we walked from the hotel into central Delhi. He explained that they would come up with some nonsense about collecting for an Indian national student support scheme and that if you tried to remove the flag, they’d give you a guilt-trip about ‘disrespecting’ their country’s flag before trying to hook you into giving them money. I had been going to India for more than 15 years before I ever encountered a woman with a flag and she got the wrong people on the wrong day. As she bounded up to us with her flag ready to go, my husband held out his hand and shouted "No!" and she turned tail and ran off. Why was he so firm? Quite simply because the day before he nearly got caught by one of these scammers. I couldn’t be too mad as the same thing had happened to me years before and I knew how easy it was to get lured into a discussion and then fleeced for more than you intended.

We had been in Lodi Gardens, wandering around between the various rather unkempt old tombs. It was our first trip to the gardens and we’d been dropped off by a driver who considered them to be a must-visit location. Considering that Delhi is a bit weak on green space, we were happy to just stroll around, keep an eye on the courting couples, snigger at the heavily sweating joggers and just take some time out from the full on intensity of the city. In one of the tombs we were alone, not something that happens very often in Delhi. A gentleman of around 55 years old came up to us, politely asking where we were from, were we having a nice holiday and all the usual stuff. He then tried to pin an artificial flower onto my husband’s shirt. He told us he worked at an eye hospital for children in the city. He may have done, he may not have done, it’s not easy to say. He had an ‘official’ looking badge and a clipboard. He told us he was collecting for the hospital.

This particular scam relies on three things. Firstly that you will feel he’s given you something – the silly flower or the paper flag – and that you’ll feel you have to give something back. Secondly that the victim will want to get rid of the scammer but with be too polite to tell an older, well-spoken, official-looking gentleman to go away and leave them alone but may well be willing to give a small donation – maybe 50 to 100 rupees - to make him disappear. We fitted the bill on that one. Finally, it relies on people’s willingness to do what other people appear to have done and to not want to be seen to be mean. We failed on that one as we’re really rather bully-proof.

Once the victim has indicated that yes, of course, they’d be happy to give a donation, the clipboard comes into play. The scammer wants your name and address so he can show other people that foreigners like you are interested in his charity. He hands you the board and a pen and you are confronted with a set of handwritten details – people from UK, USA, Australia, Germany, France, wherever. The hand writing is all different – they look to be genuine. You have their names, their addresses (which may or may not be real) and in the final column, the amount they’ve given. You are planning on giving a pound or two – but these people appear to have given £20, £50, £100. If the scam works well, you’ll up your 50-100 rupees ($1-2) to 500 or a 1000 or even 5000 rupees in order to look like you’re just as generous as all those people.
I saw my husband looking at the list and panicking. I took the note Tony planned to give and gave to the man, told him we didn’t want to fill in anything, he could take this note or leave it but we wouldn’t be giving more than that to a person approaching us in the street, he shouldn’t waste any more time on us and would he please just leave us alone. "But look madam, people from California, Great Britain, all supporting my charity". I told him again that we didn’t give that sort of money to charities we didn’t know and he started to bluster and I gave him back his silly flower. I asked if he’d like me to call a policeman (as if) and then told him one last time to leave us alone and then walked off, not even leaving him the money we would have given him just to make him go away.

I cannot rule out that some of these people may be genuine, that they may really be collecting for charities, but I don’t believe for one minute that the names and the numbers on the clipboard are real. I have nothing to prove on charitable support to India, but I give through recognised charities and not to men with clipboards who sidle up to you when there’s nobody around.

The moral of the story is simple. Don’t be ‘embarrassed’ or guilt-tripped into giving money to people whose credentials you can’t check and who want to make you feel bad about not being more generous. The Indian flag version of this works well on British tourists who may well still be feeling a tad uneasy about the excesses of our Empire days and can lead to "My ancestors gave their lives for your country and now you disrespect the flag they fought so hard to win in getting their Independence!" Yeah! Whatever – your ancestors would be SO proud that you’re a scamming little bully.
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The Closed Hotel Scam

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This scam is not one I’ve ever personally fallen for but I’ve been set up for it a few times and been able to avoid it because I’m a control freak of the first degree and I like to know exactly where I’m going to be staying when I’m in India. This particular scam relies on people turning up in a city without a hotel booking and just hoping that the hotel they want having space. It doesn’t work if you’ve already pre-booked, got your confirmation, and had recent email or phone contact with the hotel owner or receptionist.Here’s how it works.The unwary traveller arrives at the airport or railway station, tired and possibly emotional (especially if they’ve been on the t...Read More

This scam is not one I’ve ever personally fallen for but I’ve been set up for it a few times and been able to avoid it because I’m a control freak of the first degree and I like to know exactly where I’m going to be staying when I’m in India. This particular scam relies on people turning up in a city without a hotel booking and just hoping that the hotel they want having space. It doesn’t work if you’ve already pre-booked, got your confirmation, and had recent email or phone contact with the hotel owner or receptionist.

Here’s how it works.

The unwary traveller arrives at the airport or railway station, tired and possibly emotional (especially if they’ve been on the train for days and the toilets all backed up). He or she steps out of the station or airport and gets swamped by taxi drivers. Finding one who looks less insane than the others, the tourist asks the driver to take them to a specific hotel. For the sake of illustration, let’s call it the Hotel Xanadu. The Indian yes/no head wobble starts as the driver attempts to confuse the poor tourists. "No, no, sir, madam. Xanadu bad hotel. Xanadu fire, Xanadu closed, Xanadu renovations, Xanadu wiped off the face of the earth by a meteorite" I think you get the picture.

The worried tourist is confused but the helpful taxi man wants to help. "I take you somewhere nice, much better, you come with me, very fine hotel, very comfortable " and off you go, into the night (it always seems to be at night) trusting life, luggage and limb to your new best friend. He pulls up outside a generic, grubby little hotel where not surprisingly they just happen to still have a room for you. It’s late, you don’t have the slightest idea where you are, you don’t feel in a position to really ‘negotiate’ and the streets you passed through to get here had enough people sleeping on them already that you’re not keen to join them.

If the receptionist is really professional at this scam, he’s going to tell you that there’s a big event in town, all the hotels are full, he has a room for the next two nights but you need to pay for all the nights up front. You weigh up the options and give in because you can’t face going to find another hotel and you’re not planning on staying around too long. You pay way over the odds for a poor room and the driver gets a healthy ‘cut’ from the receptionist for bringing you there. Meanwhile in another part of town, the receptionist at the Xanadu is wondering what happened to those nice people who sent him an email to say they were coming but hadn’t actually paid for the room. He looks around the nice lobby of his hotel that’s not closed, not on fire and hasn’t been hit by a meteorite.

The tourists have a room in a hotel they wouldn’t have booked if it were the last on earth and for which they’ve paid well over the odds. The hotelier and the driver are happy – maybe if the tourists only stay the one night, the receptionist can even hide that they were there from his boss and pocket the overnight fees. It’s a dog eat dog world in the tourist trade.

So how can you avoid this particular scam? Well if you’re like me, you book ahead, carry the paperwork that shows you’ve already paid, and you mail the hotel a day or two beforehand to remind them that you’re coming and to let them know when to expect you. With online booking so easy these days, you can have a last minute reservation that means you really don’t have to change your way of travelling in order to have security of knowing you’ve got a bed for the night. When the driver says that your hotel has been shut down by the health inspectors, politely say that you think he must be mistaken because you spoke to the manager who is a close family friend just that morning and suggest that maybe he’s mixed it up with another place. This is the polite version. The short version is more direct "I don’t believe you. Do you want to take me to this hotel or shall I get another driver?"

If you are of the ‘I’m going to take my chances’ type, then be aware your driver will get a cut, take a good look at the hotel room before you part with any money, and if you don’t like the place, get back in the taxi and ask him to take you somewhere else. The driver isn’t going to give up on you as he’s holding on for his commission. If you have to, make him drive you round for hours until you find a place you like – after all you’re going to be indirectly paying him for his time.

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My Uncle's Emporium - retail commission scams

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This next scam is not an exclusively Indian one but it’s one I first learned about in India. It’s particularly rife in the most touristic areas of the country – Delhi, the Golden Triangle, Rajastan are all places you can be sure to see this in action. As you walk along the street, just minding your own business and taking in your surroundings, young men (I’ve never seen women doing this) will approach you and try to offer unasked for help. They will offer to take you to ‘my uncle’s emporium’ or just guide you to any random shop that you were quite capable of finding on your own. They’ll ask you where you’re from, is it your first time in India (never say yes, even if it is), do you like th...Read More

This next scam is not an exclusively Indian one but it’s one I first learned about in India. It’s particularly rife in the most touristic areas of the country – Delhi, the Golden Triangle, Rajastan are all places you can be sure to see this in action.

As you walk along the street, just minding your own business and taking in your surroundings, young men (I’ve never seen women doing this) will approach you and try to offer unasked for help. They will offer to take you to ‘my uncle’s emporium’ or just guide you to any random shop that you were quite capable of finding on your own. They’ll ask you where you’re from, is it your first time in India (never say yes, even if it is), do you like their country, in fact just about anything to make a connection. Their aim is not to practice their English, nor to flirt with the ladies – they have one intent and that’s to get you into a shop where you will buy things. They will tell you "No charge for looking, madam, please come see" and if you don’t put up sufficient resistance, you’ll soon be stuck in the back-room of a shop being shown hundreds of rugs or shawls or nick-nacks that you probably don’t want to buy.

Shopping in India is one of my favourite things to do but I NEVER let myself be taken into a shop. Why? Because the oily little fellow who lured you in will be getting a massive commission on what you spend. And that means, no matter how good you are at bargaining, you’ll be paying his commission on top of whatever minimum amount the shop keeper might have been willing to take.

I knew there had to be something ‘in it’ for these men but the amount came as a shock. I was told how this works by a young man in Jaipur on my first visit to India. Four of us had ‘hired’ him for the evening to show us around and he gave us a few useful tips which more than paid for what we gave him for his time. He revealed that he’d made a lot of money (and scored with quite a few young European women) by using his good looks and charm to get them into shops that paid him for his work. He was getting up to one third of everything they paid in these shops, just for getting them through the door.

I was lucky to learn this on my first trip to India and that knowledge has saved me a fortune over the years. If I go into a shop, I push past the people trying to ‘adopt’ me for their commission. Once inside the store I tell the shop keeper that nobody bought me there and nobody will be getting commission so I expect their best prices. I’ve always done pretty well – although of course the definition of ‘pretty well’ will be different for each person.

Outside the big tourist hot spots you will still get people – typically taxi or tuk-tuk drivers – trying to divert you from your journey to go shopping. In Bangalore we struck a deal with a tuk-tuk driver who kept dragging us to shops. I told him that if he was looking for commission, he was not going to do well from us because we weren’t buying. He in turn explained that he didn’t care – the shops were paying him a basic ‘finders fee’ for delivering us to their store. If we bought, or if we didn’t, he still got a cup of tea and a couple of hundred rupees. By tackling him on the issue of commission, and by him explaining how it worked, we were able to help him out by wandering round a few shops. He in return drove us around all day for 100 rupees, happy with his tea and payments from the shops. I would assume that the restaurant he chose for us to have lunch, also gave him tea and a bowl of food for taking us there. Don’t ever feel guilty that your driver is hanging around whilst you do something – most likely he’s perfectly happy and being compensated for his time.

A Delhi variant on the ‘My Uncle’s Emporium’ scam was played on some people who were with us on my second trip to Delhi. I’d told them about the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, a giant multi-level fixed price store on Janpath, close to the Imperial Hotel. If you are not great at bargaining or you long to be left alone to look around without being followed and pestered, then this is a great place to go. No driver can get commission from taking you to this state-run store so two groups found they were taken somewhere completely different. When we asked if they’d been to the CCIE, they said they had and that they’d hated it. They were followed around and given the hard sell. Of course they were in a completely different place where the drivers were getting commission on all sales.

If someone wants you to do something, there’s usually going to be some incentive for them so try to find out what it is and whether it’s going to cost you anything. If you know what you’re getting into, you can work their systems to your advantage or at least to your amusement. Most will be surprised that you ask, might well respect you a lot more, and together you can all have some fun. There’s nothing more frustrating than being dragged round shops when you really want to be in a museum or a park, but if you understand the scams that are going on, you can balance the day nicely.
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The Baby Milk Scam

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The baby milk scam is one which we observed outside the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamsala and a little bit of googling established that this is one of the main places where tourists have seen this particular technique in operation. It’s not exclusively an Indian idea – others have reported it in other parts of the region or in the Far East, proving conclusively that there’s always a market for a really effective and professional scam. I can’t help but almost admire this one.The area around the Dalai Lama’s temple has a lot of beggars and they have a particularly sneaky scam that they work on soft-hearted foreigners. They are unlikely to bother you on the way in, preferring instead to...Read More

The baby milk scam is one which we observed outside the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamsala and a little bit of googling established that this is one of the main places where tourists have seen this particular technique in operation. It’s not exclusively an Indian idea – others have reported it in other parts of the region or in the Far East, proving conclusively that there’s always a market for a really effective and professional scam. I can’t help but almost admire this one.

The area around the Dalai Lama’s temple has a lot of beggars and they have a particularly sneaky scam that they work on soft-hearted foreigners. They are unlikely to bother you on the way in, preferring instead to zoom in on people who are feeling ever so slightly holy and buzzing from their recent experience. These people are much more likely to be feeling generous and are more likely to feel bad about brushing away a beggar. Plagues of rat-like girls clutching dirty bundles of rags that may or may not contain small babies plea for baby milk. Most of these girls are clearly too young to be mothers. The babies – if indeed they are babies – are unlikely to be theirs.

"Not money, madam, milk for baby. Baby hungry, come shop, buy baby milk". They’ve practiced the lines time and time again, schooled in delivering the right degree of sadness to tug at the heartstrings. In me they picked the wrong mug – I have no sympathy for the girls and not one iota of maternal instincts. They are wasting their time trying to scam me on this one.

This is a particularly cunning and clever scam since it takes advantage of some basic aspects of human nature. Firstly there’s the feeling of "How can I be harsh outside a temple when I’m given an opportunity to do a small good?" Secondly there’s the tendency for many people to be more sympathetic to a dumb infant (or in my case a dog or cat) than to a grown adult. And thirdly it relies on the exploitation of embarrassment.

The reason it’s clever is that this scam is a sophisticated form of up-selling. Many of us would put our hands in our pockets for a small donation outside a temple but these girls don’t want money at least not in the direct sense. If you get hooked by this scam, you’ll get fleeced for tens of dollars or pounds. Take a look at the girls; they are not local. They don’t look like the local people, they don’t dress like them, their faces are a completely different shape, colour and structure than the local people. No mother gets on a bus and travels hundreds of miles into the Himalaya just to scrounge a few rupees. These girls are shipped in from the plains by their employers who train them, give them a baby to hold, or a bundle of rags that looks like a baby, and then drop them off to beg.

The unwary tourist thinks they’ll get away with spending maybe 100 rupees (about £1.20 at that time) after all, how much can milk cost? But they won’t got to the nearest or cheapest shop. The girl will lead you to a shop where the shopkeeper (who is in on the scam) pulls out a tub (or three) of very expensive powdered baby formula. This baby – the one whose mother is too poor to feed him – has expensive tastes. She might want you to believe she’s so malnourished that she has no milk to offer him, but baby is on the Rolls Royce of over-priced formula. The scam relies on the donor being too embarrassed to make a fuss. This is why it works well with Brits – we don’t do fuss and we hate to be embarrassed. People don’t want to lose ‘face’ – even if it is in front of a conman shop-keeper and a professional beggar. They don’t want to seem mean or rude and with the shopkeeper watching them, the unwary tourist parts with a couple of thousand rupees. The shopkeeper gets the money, the girl gets the milk and then returns later to give back the milk in return for a cut of the proceeds of the sale of the ridiculously over-priced product.

If you want to help poor people in India, don’t give to these girls. If they’re hanging around a temple, then please give your money to the temple or to local charities who can manage it properly. You may say "What harm does it do? It’s my money, if I want to give it to the babies, where’s the problem?" Just ask yourself if that’s a real baby, and if it is, ask yourself why it is that you never see the baby cry and why the babies rarely even open their eyes. Ask yourself if the girl is behaving in a ‘maternal’ way or just lugging the baby around like so much disposable luggage. Some of these babies are drugged up to stay asleep because that way the cause no trouble to their young ‘minders’. You think you’re helping the baby – the scam relies on that belief - but more likely you’ll just encourage people to continue this scam, to buy or steal babies from mothers who cannot afford to keep them, and to hook the babies on cheap drugs. You really don’t want to stop and think about ‘what next’ for a baby raised on opiates and discarded when it gets too big to be carried around.
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Watch your shoes - it's the Dog Poo Scam

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This particular scam is one I’ve often read about but hadn’t ever experienced until we were in Delhi in 2012. I knew the scam – unfortunately my gullible husband didn’t, and he’s the one on whom it was perpetrated. Luckily it didn’t cost him too much but he learned his lesson and he won’t get caught out again.We were in a very touristy area, walking between Connaught Circle towards Janpath, passing above the underground Palika Bazaar. We’d been distracted by a mongoose in a bush – though I have no reason to suspect this cute little critter was in on the game. The grass was so dry that it almost crackled under foot, the soil was dry and cracked. As we reached the end of the grass bank...Read More

This particular scam is one I’ve often read about but hadn’t ever experienced until we were in Delhi in 2012. I knew the scam – unfortunately my gullible husband didn’t, and he’s the one on whom it was perpetrated. Luckily it didn’t cost him too much but he learned his lesson and he won’t get caught out again.

We were in a very touristy area, walking between Connaught Circle towards Janpath, passing above the underground Palika Bazaar. We’d been distracted by a mongoose in a bush – though I have no reason to suspect this cute little critter was in on the game. The grass was so dry that it almost crackled under foot, the soil was dry and cracked. As we reached the end of the grass bank, I jumped down and my husband followed. A passing shoe-shine man contrived to be in exactly the right place at the right time. His skills of timing and placement were worth the cost of the scam and I retain a certain degree of admiration for how he pulled it off. I jumped down and turned to give my husband my hand. He dislocated his knee a few years ago and is wary of steps, let alone a jump of a foot or more. He was looking at me and not at his feet.

As Tony landed, the shoe shine man pointed to his boot. "Sir, sir, dog shit, sir" (no word of a lie, these were his exact words). Weren’t we fortunate that he just happened to be there with his shoe shine kit to help us out. We explained that he couldn’t clean Tony’s boots because they were expensive ones (not that they looked it) that can only be cleaned with special products. Odd as it sounds, they are indeed Goretex breathable leather boots and this was entirely true. "No problem sir, I just clean it off". Out came a grubby looking cloth, a little brush and he set to work.

Tony was reaching for a note to give the guy – fortunately not a big one so I didn’t interfere. A good wife should not really give her hubby a dressing down in a public space over a matter of perhaps 50 rupees. I dragged him away laughing before he could get too attached to his new shoe shine buddy. "Did you ever see dog poo that came out like liquid diarrhoea?" I asked him. "Look how dry the ground is, there’s no way that came out of a dog and sat around waiting for you to tread in it, on the TOP of your boot, not the bottom". I’m no expert on dog poo but I knew the colour the consistency and even the smell were all wrong. The helpful shoe shine man most likely had a small squeezy bottle in his pocket filled with watered down cow dung of a perfect squirting consistency. He’d waited for Tony to be distracted, squirted his shoe and then presented himself as his guardian angel. No dog had been needed, just a quick bit of sleight of hand.

Luckily Tony’s fear of the guy ruining his Goretex prevented him being conned for more money and we took the whole thing in good spirits. I’d never seen the poo-scam before but I’d read about it fifteen years earlier and had actually been quite surprised to have escaped it for so many years. Tony doesn’t read guidebooks and forums and so was clueless about what was going on. He declared that if it happened again, he’d just poor water on his boot to clear the "Sir, Sir, dog shit" and wave the potential rescuer away.

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