Finn slipped a Mickey

A SUPPOSEDLY free drink proved extremely expensive for an unfortunate young tourist from Finland, who was allegedly drugged and had over €10,000 charged to his bank cards.

National Police in Alicante have arrested four people, including two taxi drivers whose payment terminals were used to make the charges.

The 25-year-old victim, who occasionally resides in the province, had gone out with friends in the Alicante port nightlife area, where a man claiming to work as a PR agent for a pub invited them to a free drink.

The pub was actually a brothel and they accepted the drink but after about half an hour he started to feel unwell and a woman, who it later transpired worked there, took him away from his friends and gave him a pill which she said would make him feel better.

The victim said he lost consciousness until the following afternoon, when his friends found him dazed and disorientated not far from the establishment.

He noticed two bank cards were missing and checked his account to find that several transfers totalling €6,000 had been taken during the night, and his cards had charges including several exorbitant taxi rides for a total of €4,665.

The young man only remembered flashes from the night before, including voices telling him to try to remember the PIN for his cards.

He also noticed someone had changed the language on his phone from Finnish to Spanish.

Suspecting he had been drugged in order to get his bank details, he went to a medical centre for a blood test and proved positive for substances including amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, MDMA and even methadone.

Once he had recovered, he reported his suspicions at the police station, where officers identified the two taxi drivers whose terminals had been used to charge the victim’s cards.

Once they had been arrested, they admitted having let the manager of the establishment use their terminals to charge a client, claiming that his were not working, in return for a commission of about 10%.

Officers then arrested the manager and a female employee on suspicion of fraud.

The suspects, three Spanish men and a Romanian woman aged between 30 and 52 – two of them with criminal records – were released after making statements to police until they are summonsed by a court.