Helicopter rescue fraud preys on Everest trekkers

KATHMANDU, Nepal — When Geoffrey Chang, an Australian trekker heading to Mount Everest Base Camp, woke up with chest pain, his Nepali guide pushed immediately for a medical evacuation, saying he had a serious case of acute mountain sickness.

But the next morning, Chang was feeling better, and his oxygen levels had come back to acceptable levels, he said. His travel companion, Michelle Tjondro, asked the guide if they could simply rest that day or walk down like others with similar symptoms.

That’s when the red flags started to pile up.

The guide pushed aside those suggestions, continuing to press for a costly helicopter evacuation. Afterward, at a hospital marketed to foreigners in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, Chang’s passport was confiscated for several days, he said, and as the bill rose, a doctor told him his symptoms would need to be exaggerated in order to have insurance pay for his stay.

Chang and Tjondro, and the insurance company they booked with, now all believe they were the target of a scam that has corroded Nepal’s tourism industry and sucked huge sums of money from insurance companies.

The Nepalese government and trek insurance companies describe a wave of fraud in which Mount Everest trek operators, guides, helicopter evacuation companies and hospitals are conspiring to bilk insurance companies by encouraging unneeded evacuations and exaggerating medical symptoms and services. Officials said that as of June, they had flagged millions of dollars’ worth of potentially fraudulent insurance claims this year.

Nepal’s government announced a new monitoring program late last week to crack down on the fraud.