Nepalese authorities recently announced that the Nepalese police have arrested six officials from travel agencies and mountaineering rescue agencies, accusing them of participating in a large-scale "fake rescue" scam. 3 mountain rescue agencies operating in holy mountain climbing places such as Mount Everest,He is suspected of defrauding insurance companies of nearly US$20 million in huge compensation payments by fictitious or creating unnecessary helicopter rescue operations.
Investigators say the defendants organized a sophisticated network to "direct" medical emergencies to justify expensive helicopter evacuations and then submitted false claims to international travel insurance companies. Of the 2,320 rescue operations reviewed, 317 were confirmed to be fraudulent.
The scam allegedly involved collusion between trekking guides, helicopter operators and medical institutions, and even some trekkers with mild altitude sickness were persuaded by the guides to undergo unnecessary helicopter evacuation.
According to reports, an organization sent a plane to pick up four climbers at one time, but when applying for compensation, it claimed that it had carried out four operations and received four compensation payments.
In order to defraud the trust of insurance companies, these companies also teamed up with a private hospital to falsify medical records and medical reports.
The financial scale involved in this fraud is staggering, Bureau of Investigation data shows.Mountain Rescue Service alone conducted 171 false rescues, resulting in more than $10.3 million in insurance claims.
In total, the three institutions were found to have made approximately $20 million in false claims.
In addition, as early as 2018, a similar scandal broke out in Nepal. Some company tour guides deliberately added large amounts of baking soda to tourists' food, causing tourists to vomit and have diarrhea, and then guided them to call for helicopter rescue to defraud insurance companies and make profits.
The local government said that the conspiracy of mountain guides, helicopter rescue companies and medical institutions to defraud insurance is a chronic problem in the local tourism industry, which has greatly damaged the reputation of Nepal's tourism industry.The Nepali government promises to take concrete actions to restore the country's reputation.
