A Scottish teenager’s Greek holiday
turned sour when he was held hostage in a motorcycle rental-shop
scam.
The 17-year-old, who was in Greece to
celebrate the completion of his training for the Scots Guards, had
rented a motorcycle and was returning it to the rental shop when a
woman who was driving on the wrong side of the road collided with
him, according to a story on news.scotsman.com.
The rental shop owners locked him in
the store and refused to let him out until he paid for damages to the
bike. He called his parents, who sent the money by Western Union, but
it arrived after Western Union facilities there were closed for the
day.
The young man escaped from the shop,
then hid in a ditch for hours. He finally made it back to his hotel.
But as he and some friends waited for an early morning bus, men on
motorcycles surrounded them. After the friends managed to get onto
the bus, the motorcyclists called the police, who refused to let the
young man leave until he paid for the damage.
Bus passengers finally kicked in enough
to do the job, about $600 Cdn, and he was allowed to leave.
He said later that one of the men held
a police-type baton while he was being kept in the bike-rental shop.
He added that he had been told by someone else that others had been
seriously injured when they were held in the same scam.
Note the last line of the story. This is alleged to have happened before, at the same place.
While it may be forcible confinement, and illegal, I don’t see the “scam”, unless the woman driving the car was in on it. It was people wanting their damage money before someone left the country for good.
I guess the young recruit should have brought his Enfield L85 and a couple 30 round magazines with him. The perfect scam buster!