It’s been an interesting few days. I’ve been to Italy to buy a new bike, like you do. On the way back I swung by and saw an old friend of mine who lives just north of Lyon. In fact he’s in the Beaujolais region. In the big swing of things wasn’t that much of a detour. Then I went down to see his sister and her husband who live just south of Avignon. I stayed with them for one night, then I continued my journey back towards southern Spain. Beaujolais. It got really interesting when I got into Spain. I crossed the border and was heading down towards Barcelona when some guy goes past me waving indicating and pointing and all that kind of stuff and I thought what the hell is this? It was one guy on his own, I ignored him and went past him. Then he went past me again waving frantically to pull in. I wondered whether it was something wrong with the trailer and I thought I better check so like a bloody idiot I pulled in and that’s where it all went wrong. The guy got out of the car and said you got a problem and I thought, with the trailer? Nothing seems to be wrong, no loose tie downs and he said; “no with your back wheel, your car”. That’s when I knew he was bullshitting me because I knew there was nothing wrong with the back wheel of the car. He said “Look, look look look at your wheel and tyre, the plastic is rubbing on the tyre, I could smell the fumes for the last 5Km”. He got me to crouch down and have a look at it. There was nothing wrong. I told him that there was nothing wrong and went to get back in the car He said be careful and wished me good luck. I’d watched him like a hawk, wondering if he was going to pull a knife or put a tiny tracker on the trailer or motorbike. Maybe he wanted to car jack me take the car and the motorbike but then he would have to leave the car he was driving. It didn’t stack up. It was all very polite. I wondered what the bloody hell the scam was. Anyway, I spent the next 2 1/2 hours, wondering what the hell it was all about. He hadn’t tried anything but it was a scam, I knew it was a scam, I could smell it but what was the after? Maybe he just changed his mind halfway through, I just didn’t know. Then when I got just shy of the hotel I found out. I stopped for a leak and to get the hotel details, I opened the door on the other side of the car to get my bag out and….empty… a gap. Blink, no bag! What the? I’m sure I put it behind the passenger seat, I know I did. Many expletives, loudly. No bag. No passport, no V5 for the car that I’m driving, no registration documents for the new bike, no keys for the new bike, no receipts. Everything including all the personal identity documents that I could possibly need to do the deal and register the bike in Italy or Spain, GONE! Motherof-fuckinggod! Also my new iPad and GoPro which I bought in The States in April. The only good thing about it was, I had all my credit cards in a credit card holder in my pocket. I had carefully made sure I took the keys out of the car before I got out of the car and put them in my pocket and my phone, I had all of them so he couldn’t grab them. I headed for the hotel and there was a Police car sitting in a side road, the officer was killing time. I told him all about it and he said that it was called the Peruvian scam, because that’s where it originated and they fly people in to do it. He advised me to go to the hotel try and get a night’s sleep and report it in the morning, so that’s what I attempted to do. I checked into the hotel , put the car and the motorbike complete with my trackers in each in the basement car park behind secure locked doors. I didn’t want them coming back with the keys to try and take the bike. Anything could be possible I just didn’t know. Then I looked on my phone and it occurred to me that I have my earbuds in the bag and also the iPad. Maybe I can track them on that but I’d switched the iPad off completely before leaving my friends in France. So that was useless but the earbuds were still sending a location signal and there they were right by the side of the motorway two or three hours back down the road. I kept an eye on them in the evening and they didn’t move. I couldn’t sleep so I got up at five, went to the police station and reported it all. I told them about the earbuds and that I was going to go all the way back to check it out. I made my way back up to where the signal was emitting from. When I got there the traffic was really busy, it showed it was in the central reservation and it was going to be more difficult than I thought to actually retrieve this bag or Airpods. I turned off and lo and behold there was a police car at the first roundabout, right next to the Autopista. I told them what it happened and I needed to reach to either the AirPods or the bag whatever it was in the central reservation. They said, right you stay here. We’ll go and retrieve it and we’ll be back in 10 minutes because we’ve got to do a loop round to get there. They weren’t even 10 minutes. Thumbs up and they held the bag up right in front of me, faaaantastic! Unbelievably, everything, all of my documents were in the bag. I couldn’t believe what was still in the bag. The two new keys for the motorbike the receipts, log book, my passport everything was there, even the iPad! The only thing that I lost was a GoPro why the GoPro? I don’t know but presumably it couldn’t be located. It didn’t have a location thing on it because unlike the earbuds or the iPad you can tell where they are but who cares. They took a nice top and a T-shirt that were in the bag, apparently because they can either wear them or sell them off easily without trace and I think there was another item of clothing in there. All of my connecting leads even my Apple Watch charging lead, they all went. But all that shit is pretty trivial really because the most important things were the documents and the bike keys and I got them all back. Even if the iPad had gone wouldn’t have been that serious. The police explained it to me, they were after money and only money or cards. When I said I didn’t see the other guy go to the other door, they said; no it wouldn’t be one guy, It’ll be two guys that would be lying down in the back of the car, they work in threes. They flag you down, distract you, whilst two guys go to the other side of the car and rob whatever they can but basically they’re not interested in anything except money or credit cards. As far as I know I didn’t take my wallet with me and if I did have my wallet in there it didn’t have anything of any consequence in it, so happy days. ( when I got back to my place I found that my wallet must’ve been in the bag because it’s not in my safe). One thing, the car was really clean and smart. It was an unblemished white Ford, I thought it was a Fiesta but I think they’ve stopped making them, it didn’t suit the driver. The police said that’ll be because it’s a hire car. They hire cars to do this and they just keep circulating round all day and rob lots of people. He showed me photographs of people that they pulled in the day before. It wasn’t him but they’re pulling people all the time. Apparently the gangs fly people in and get them doing this scam and then they fly out again and they hire cars so with all that expense they’re turning over a lot of people. The lesson is if you ever get flagged down on any motorway in Europe don’t bloody stop. Anyone want to buy heated seats? I’ll never use them. After much debate I decided I wasn’t getting any younger and went for it. So now sadly the Monster aaaand the Panigale have to go.
I've never heard of that one before, but it's good to be made aware that this sort of thing happens. And, nice bike, congrats!
Wow... Sorry that BS happened to you but amazing that the airpods tracker turned it all around. Nice new bike amigo!
I’ve heard of that before. Happened a lot in the UK in that past. Not a pleasant experience. Nice bike by the way.
It used to be Spanish police that had the reputation of being lazy and uninterested, while the good old British Bobby could be relied upon to leave no stone unturned in pursuit of missing stuff and the miscreants who pinched it. How things have changed! I'm glad you got most of your stuff back and thanks for the heads up. I'd heard of this scam and variants of it, but it's always good to be reminded.
Sorry you went through this @Sam1199 but a much better outcome than you could have wished for. Yes, advise given to me during security training courses for travelling for work was always to never pull over until you are somewhere with other people about, and always lock the car as you get out. Always put bags in the boot or behind the passenger seat and adjust the passenger seat back onto it to Jam it in. I've travelled in some dodgy places but there are dodgy people in the nicest places. This should also be applied when refueling at a petrol station. With a Van or most 4x4s like my discovery, if I'm on one side of the vehicle watching the petrol pump somebody could easily carefully open a door on the other side without me knowing. Tinted glass in the rear of vehicles doesn't help in this respect, you might see the interior light go on if you are lucky. If you get out and Pay at the pump without closing the drivers door you don't even have the interior light to warn you another door has been opened. I had a colleague who invited a girl back to his room in Taiwan, nothing went missing that he noticed at the time, but 2 months later an email arrived with a photo of his business card and link to his personal FB account asking for money for the baby that was on it's way.
Was he sure it was a ‘girl’ that he invited back? Best thing I’ve heard all week, made me laugh, although no offence intended to Sam or your poor mate.
Awful that it happened, but thumbs up for modern tech so you got so much back just because of something like airpods.
Thanks for sharing, Sam. A new entry in my list of potential scams. Are you going to import the Italian bike into Spain? No custom duties of course, but what does that entail?
He was a Colleague, and in this case in no way a 'Mate'. In this case he had 'entertained' the young lady in his room giving her the opportunity to steal a business card, but you should always be careful who you give a card to in certain parts of the world. The threat after they found him probably via Linkedin then FB was to contact his wife via FB if he didn't pay. I don't know the outcome. I'm not usually a training type guy, dismissing it as a waste of time nearly always, but the ones I've had to do with regard to security and personal safety when travelling for work have been really interesting and eye opening. Especially the ones for travelling in some parts of the world. It's certainly some training that I've applied to my personal life as well. .
My mates once pulled a prank on me by getting someone to phone me up pretending to be a girl with whom I'd had a one night stand on our lad's holiday, telling me she was pregnant, the bastards! The best foreign holiday scam story I've ever heard though was told to be my mate who was a CID detective. In the late 90s/early 00s when the internet was new and 419 email fraud was a huge problem, the Met sent a small team of detectives over to Nigeria to train their police in how to deal with the scammers at source. They landed at Lagos airport, were met by a man in an official looking uniform holding up a sign with their names on it and were shown to a government car. After a short while, what with these guys being detectives and all, they realised something was up as they were heading even further out of rather than into the city, where they expected they would be staying and so one of them tapped the glass to speak to the driver, who responded by pulling a gun on them. They were then driven out into the bush in the middle of nowhere, ordered to strip to their underwear and abandoned at the side of what was little more than a track with literally nothing except their boxer shorts and socks. No phones, no passports, no idea were they were, nothing. They eventually found their way to a village and luckily (this was before everyone on earth had a mobile or access to the web) the no doubt rather bemused head man had a satellite phone, so they very sheepishly phoned their gaffer back at Scotland Yard to tell him what had happened and that he needed to get someone to come and rescue them but hopefully the local police will not have been so thoroughly infiltrated by the scammers as the ones in the city clearly had been.
Sorry to hear that this happened to you Sam, shame that you lost what you did but great on the other hand that you managed to retrieve the most important bits by dint of your ear pods. A warning indeed! As the the new bike, looks great. Are you still going to be keeping the 1200 MTS? You said that the Pani and Monster are going but no mention of the Multi?
Sorry to hear about this but fantastic that it got resolved so swiftly. This was a common scam back in the 90s when I lived in Napoli.
Fark me Sami, that is a nasty business. I just got back from a van trip to Portimao and Valencia. Based on your experience my very lackadaisical attitude would have left me on the hard shoulder in my pants! I will in future engage beast mode and be way more alert.
Got to be one of the oldest tricks in the book haha. Dick Turpin says hi etc.. Glad you got a decent resolution @OP
Pretty sure similar happened/nearly happened to me on A42 in Leicestershire a few years ago. I'm sure they got cold feet/aborted mission when they realised my wife was in the car. NOBODY fvcks with Mrs Biscuit
Thanks for sharing OP, it’s good we’re reminded of the scallywags out there. I drive through Europe a lot, so noted…
