TERROR IN PARADISE:
Kiwi kidnapped on dream holiday
AKiwi father on holiday with his family in Bali was kidnapped for more than four hours and forced to play a card game that scammed him of $2000.
The victim, whose wife spoke to the Herald on Sunday because he was too traumatised to talk, was alone on the streets in Seminyak when a local man sat down on a bench beside him.
The pair started chatting and the local man said his sister was moving to Auckland to be a nurse and asked the Kiwi to talk to her about New Zealand.
“My husband just thought, being a really nice guy, that it was fine.”
He got into a car with the Balinese man to speak to the woman.
“The doors got shut and he got locked in and then he was driven away. They drove him into a property where they locked the gate. They took him inside and they sat [him] down, they wouldn’t let him leave.”
The Kiwi “started to get quite fretful” because he had no idea what the strangers were capable of.
“He didn’t think he was going to get out of it alive.”
The local man forced the New Zealander to play a round of cards before telling him he had to “up the stakes” by betting money.
When he ran out of cash the scammers drove him to a shop and forced him to swipe his card and enter his pin, his wife said.
“He swiped his card and they just took out every last bit of money.”
The money they took was more than $2000, his wife said.
After the 41⁄ 2- hour ordeal the scammers finally put the man in a taxi and sent him back to his hotel. Before the car drove away they gave him a cellphone. “They said ‘We’ll be in touch’.” When the man arrived at his hotel, he handed the phone to reception and told them and his family what had happened. They contacted a relative back home, who called the New Zealand Embassy in Jakarta.
The Embassy got the man to file a report with local police and advised the family to return to New Zealand immediately. They cut their holiday a week short, forking out $2000 to change flights.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman confirmed the family of a New Zealander contacted the New Zealand Embassy in Jakarta for assistance.
Travellers should check the ministry’s Safe Travel website if they were worried about being scammed while overseas and report any scams they are the victim of to the local police, the spokesman said.
The Safe Travel website warns of scams similar to the one described.
“Many countries on the tourist beat have their own special scams that target the overseas traveller,” it states.
In 2011 an Australian couple holidaying in Bali were conned in similar circumstances. A newspaper reported the scam cost Delys and Norm Langford AUD$18,000.