{"id":307,"date":"2009-08-12T06:30:48","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T20:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=307"},"modified":"2009-08-12T06:30:48","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T20:30:48","slug":"bangkok-intl-airport-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=307","title":{"rendered":"Bangkok International Airport Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>To all those who travel frequently: please be very, very careful. Read on&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>An Indian was detained in Bangkok for stealing a box of cigarettes in a duty-free shop at Bangkok  International Airport. He had paid for chocolates and a carton of cigarettes. The cashier put an extra packet of cigarettes into his bag and he thought it was a free promo pack. He was arrested for shop-lifting and the Thai Police extortion price was 30,000 Baht for his release. He spent two nights in jail and paid 500 Baht for an air-conditioned cell, 300 baht for each visitor and 11,000 baht for his final release.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The Police shared the money within his full view. On top of that, he was charged in court and fined 2,000 baht by the magistrate and handcuffed and escorted to his plane. His passport was stamped &#8220;Thief&#8221;. While there, his relatives requested help from the Indian Embassy but were told that they were helpless. Many Asians are victimized daily but letters and phone-calls to the Thai authorities are ignored. He shared a cell with a Singaporean who paid 60,000 baht for his release. The second night was a Malaysian national who paid 70,000 baht.<\/p>\n<p>This was not in a shanty shop in downtown Bangkok but in a Duty Free Shop at the Bangkok International Airport. This information is true because Mr. Rajan Khera&#8217;s customer from India faced exactly the same scenario when he was in transit at Bangkok International Airport en route to Taipei.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A similar ordeal in Dubai<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A tourist bought some stuff at the Duty Free Shop in Dubai. The girl at Duty Free put a bottle of cologne in his shopping bag. He did not even see it happen. He was arrested for stealing. All these took place even before he picked up his luggage. He sat at the airport jail where he was harassed the whole day. He was not given food or water the whole day and was released only after he paid a fine of USD 500. That was all the cash he had in his wallet at the time. These are scams that are happening all over many Duty Free Shops. So far, nothing of this sort has been reported at Sydney  Airport. This is well-planned and the people who work at the airport know whom to target. The duty free employees intentionally put extra items to scam the passenger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To all those who travel frequently: please be very, very careful. Read on&#8230; An Indian was detained in Bangkok for stealing a box of cigarettes in a duty-free shop at Bangkok International Airport. He had paid for chocolates and a carton of cigarettes. The cashier put an extra packet of cigarettes into his bag and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}