The Scam That Could Have Been...

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Rajasthan is for many the highlight of a trip to India, whether this is for a specific perception of what entails exciting travel or a lack of comparable experiences, it wasn’t for me. One can’t argue against the stunning history, bizarre cities, rich and colourful people and must-do activities but with such appeal comes the inescapable use and abuse. It was the place in India where we felt most threatened, uncomfortable, un-special and most like a walking dollar bill. Coming from our rather surreal experience of being the centre of a bizarre love triangle in Amritsar we fell directly into the clutches of Jaipur dizzy and drunk off Indian hospitality and there to catch us was Super Ali.

After 14 hours on a train full of snoring, stinky, perverted Indians the last thing you want is to walk through hot dusty streets searching for a hotel. We took a rickshaw from the station using our familiar story that we had to meet some friends in 10 mins at a central café, this way avoiding the dilemma of paying commission should he take you to a hotel. Have a coffee, maybe a snack, dump your bags in the café and send one person out on the hunt for a cheap room. Tried, tested and foolproof in Lisa & Tim’s book on how to backpack sensibly! Ahhhh, wrong.

The café we chose in this case was in ruins and had been for some time apparently. As we were explaining to the rickshaw man that we would stay anyway along came Super Ali in is sporty Mazda 6. Of course he’s best buddies with the rickshaw man and after some brief exchanges he’s pretending he’s also ours. “You’re Australian! No Way! My wife’s Australian, let’s call her so you can have a chat!”

Blah, blah, blah. In the end he seems like a nice fellow and so does his wife even though she was woken at 1am by the call. He insists we come to his friend’s hotel where he promises a cheap room. The room’s good and cheap so we feel good with Super Ali, a ship-shape Indian chap with an Aussie wife. He offers to take us sight seeing later in the day once we’ve freshened up so we agree to meet him at the hotel in the afternoon. The sightseeing was a real treat, cruising the dusty town in an air conditioned Mazda as opposed to sweating out on foot. By now we were perplexed at our luck, the five star treatment in Amritsar and now this! High Five!

In the afternoon we visit Ali’s brother in his textile store, in the background of my mind I start to hear bells and whistles, a distant alarm. I’m thinking, “It’s starting to make sense now, all this friendship, petrol, good will, it’s all leading to this. He’s trying to lure us into the hard sell on souvenirs.” But he didn’t even encourage us to buy anything! Next stop was his cousin’s Kashmiri shawl business; there were hot cups of Kawa, stories of home told but still no hard sell. “Why the hell is he being so friendly?”

Next it was time to see Ali’s workplace. He’d told us already that he was in export, sending goods to his wife in Australia where she had a retail outlet. Walking into ‘his’ office we immediately sensed something dodgy. The room would have originally been office space but this was refurbished as a makeshift jewellery store with glass cabinets, cash register and sales persons with slicked back hair. Before we could even blink at all the bling bling we were ushered into an office in the rear where we would meet Ali’s boss. It could have been normal were it not for the man by the desk looking like an extra for an Indian rendition of The Sopranos and the large window behind us that even a fine, law-abiding citizen such as me could tell was double-sided, the kind found in prisoner interrogation rooms.

Mr Abdul (aka Mr Slick) cut straight to the chase that yes, Ali is one of his employees but the export trade we were viewing was a little unconventional. Our little adventure with Ali had proved that we were fun, friendly and trustworthy people and for this reason he was going to offer us the opportunity of a lifetime. You see, poor little Abdul was in a bind, he had a never ending supply of fine jewels and jewellery that were ready for sale all over Europe but he just hated paying import and export duties to get them to the customers. In a neat little legal loophole he could pay us an exorbitant wage to send these jewels to Europe under our names, collect them from the post office IN EUROPE, pop us on the next plane and have us back in India with 20 000 Euros to continue travelling faster than you could say, “Two aloo palak, four chapatti and a banana bhang lassi thanks.”

From the moment Mr Slick opened his mouth I’d already assumed a nice slump in the chair, a cocky smirk and a disposition that said, “You realise that as soon as you stop talking I’m gonna say ‘Ta very much and I’ll see ya later camel breath’” He must have sensed this because he just kept on talking. Cynicism was slowly turning into mysticism as he explained that there was really nothing for us to lose. The invoice for the jewellery would be in our name, they would give us a return ticket that we could confirm with the airline before we did anything, we would be present when the jewellery was packed and sent from the post office, the money would be paid to us in cash in Europe which we could then cash into travellers cheques or do as we wish and it was all law abiding given that foreigners are allowed to send goods up to US$10 000 without paying duty. He just needed us to sign for the package in Europe and hand it over to his ‘associate’. Hmmmmmmm.

We like to consider ourselves pretty alert travellers and knew that there was every chance that the exchange was a silly thing to do but when you’re living on around $10 a day and someone offers you 20 000 Euro for a seemingly innocent trip to Europe, your brain cogs start spinning. Despite his pleas for urgency we told him there was ‘No Way’ we would agree to anything until we’d slept on it and discussed it between ourselves in private. The next couple of hours it felt like our brains were swimming in a vast pool of angels and demons and each of them had a damn good argument.

By this stage in our trip we hadn’t yet discovered the wonders of the Lonely Planet’s ThornTree website but it seemed like a perfect opportunity to harness its power. We searched and searched for an internet café that was open and eagerly typed in the address, the search criteria, “Scams, India, Jaipur, Jewellery”, hoping for a post that would choose our destiny. Low and behold we found a post that answered every question we could dream of. The post was from someone who had experienced the exact scam and both of us sat in a head-wagging trance as we read on…

The beauty of this scam is the ‘no risk’ element. Most jewellery scams require you to pay a little money for the opportunity to make lots of money. On investigation into the Indian laws it appears viable that it is legal to send the goods to Europe, after all, EVERY tourist shops in India, I sent three packages home in my time there. Whilst one side of your brain is telling you ‘no’, the other side keeps rationalising the feasibility of the scheme. So, here’s how the scam goes…

Ali, as our friend, spun the web. By taking us to a hotel he now knew where to find us. He’d taken us out and acted as a friend, even taking us to dinner, to make us trust him. He’d even commissioned a girl in Australia to act as a personality reference. Had we agreed to the plan we’d have been issued our return tickets then whisked to the post office with our package that we’d witnessed being packed and with an invoice made out in our names sent the goods express post with insurance to Sweden. We would have gone out that night and partied with Ali on his expense. We would be happy beyond belief, we would be making 20 000 Euros in a couple of days. We would go home tired and ready for our private taxi that would be taking us to the airport at lunchtime the next day. We would have been woken at around 4am by Ali telling us that something terrible had happened…

In the scam you are allegedly woken in the middle of the night to the news that there has been a raid on the office and that Mr Slick has been arrested and details of your package and your identity are now in the hands of the police. Ali would tell you that thankfully there is a way you can clear your name, to get out of this mess, to avoid being arrested and face months or years in an Indian prison. He knows someone at the post office who can eliminate the evidence of your package for a fee… a BIG fee. So it goes that innocent backpackers are terrified into handing over horrific bribes for this service, praying that they won’t end up in jail. Credit cards are swiped, parent’s accounts are raided and internet transfers flow like molten gold. Just when things are looking up and Ali’s giving you hugs and telling you, “that was a close one!” the phone rings and the voice tells Ali that they need ‘more’! The police are hot on the trail, they may as well be out the front door, and you gotta pay them off too! You’re screaming, “You said it was legal! What’s going on?” but you pay because you’re scared for your life. You pay because you’ve read ‘Shantaram’ and you will do whatever it takes to stay out of an Indian prison.

Hours later, scared and exhausted you hug Ali goodbye at the airport whilst tentatively looking over your shoulder for the S.W.A.T team that’s been trailing you. You board you’re flight and as the plane takes off you heart rate drops below 150bpm for the first time all day. You think how lucky you were that you had Ali, what a great friend. You think about India, what a shit hole! I’m never going back there again (which is a good thing because you’re return flight’s been cancelled).

Sitting in the office with Mr Slick we were shown a large folder of photocopied passports, the victims that this little scam posse alone had scared out of their money and India. Reading the article on ThornTree and deciding how best to tell Super Ali of our decision to not join him in this lucrative plan I felt a real sadness for those photocopied faces. A week earlier we’d trusted it’s people and India had paid us back with lifelong memories, if we’d trusted Ali we’d have ended up broke, beaten and with a hatred of India. That’s the kind of place India is, love it one minute, you hate it the next, you try to trust your gut and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When I first met Ali and he asked me what I thought of Indian people I told him, “It’s all in the smile, if you stare into a smile long enough you know who you can trust”. A week later we were in Pushkar and a Dutch guy who’d just forked out another 10 000 rupee to repair his Royal Enfield (the bike had cost him around 90 000 rupee in six months) slurred to me drunkenly, “Fuck India man, the only place on earth where people can look you dead in the eye and lie, lie, lie”. I thought back to Ali’s gleaming pearly teeth behind the wheel of his Mazda and muttered, “ I think you’re right”.

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Comments

[monika and david]

thanks a lot
hey guys, thanks a lot for your report. We are in Southindia at the moment (Varkala), ready to fall into this trap but luckily read your blog in time. Everything was excatly how you described it, nice talking, nice dinner, you start to trust the people, think you finally found honest indian friends......Fortunately we were listening to the little voice in our head (or stomache, david got sick after the dinner with the slick guys and was vomiting the whole night we were "sleeping" on it) telling us that there has to be a catch... THANK YOU! and thanks to world wide web! At least now we have a good story to tell our people back home.....