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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

In St. Petersburg, Russia, there was reportedly a restaurant where a fake date would invite men and then quote them exorbitant sum (order of magnitude higher than expected) for food and drink.

All the profits, none of the risks of criminal persecution.

Russian has a slang word, dynamo, for the attractive women who date without romantic interest just to get dined & maybe some presents, and then bail out.

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It's very common scam and not only in Russia. A woman splits the profits with the restaurant that charges the naive Western tourists 10x of normal bill(actually it can be without a woman trap involvment). The same can happen with a clothing store. Some guys can spend like $1000 on woman's clothes which she promptly returns and gets part of her share. Heck even on Greek islands, many clubs had attractive ladies on payrol to get the guys in and buy drinks.

I don't believe they targeted foreign tourists specifically, rather than local dudes from Tinder.

Tourists are much easier marks for these scams. Locals know, have less money, and more local support.

That is a very common scam in China. If the girl you just met is too good to be true, ya, you are going to get scammed.

The easiest rule of thumb while traveling is that if you're the one who is approached(or, if there is a situation that is engineered to have you approach someone), you're what's for dinner.

So what do you do to eat while traveling, since cafes and grocery stores have you approaching a server or cashier to get food? How do you get around town? Until we have self driving cars, Taxis/Uber require approaching a person (via an app that's very much engineered to have you approach the driver). Do you just sit at the airport (because the hotel experience is engineered to have your approach the reception desk where there's a person) until it's time to leave? I guess you can avoid a person at newer hotels and some Airbnb's, but what a weird way to travel!

For airports specifically, look for an official taxi stand with an attendant. I flew into Santiago about 15 years ago to spend a month in Chile and didn't think twice about being scammed. Everything I read said that Chile and (modulo city life) Santiago had and still has relatively low prevalence of crime and corruption, by any standard. While I'm always wary of pick pockets and other random street crime, some places you tend not to worry about organized or systematic criminal rackets wrt mundane activities. So I just jumped into a cab at the airport without looking for a taxi stand.

Recently I came across a forum where people were discussing a supposedly well-known and long-time scam at the Santiago airport involving taxis picking people up and extorting money. So perhaps I dodged a bullet (or an adventure) at the Santiago airport. Of course, there's no guarantee an attendant wouldn't be in on the scam, but the goal here is reasonable risk minimization, otherwise your only real option is to hunker down in some Japanese or Swiss suburb.

This is good advice but I fear it's only a matter of time before scammers realize this and turn up as dates that are quite believable similar to your average Joe/Jane.

Maybe they don't want that. They don't want you as The Reasonable Guy show up and react upon all the warning signs and be a nuisance.

What they want is to have extra careless, out-of-touch guys to filter themselves in by responding to somewhat questionable profile.

Reminds me of how scammers will intentionally use bad grammar/spelling in emails to filter out "low conversion rate" prospects.

This is often referred to as the tea shop scam. The girl doesn't have to be "too good to be true".

It's often just someone who appears friendly and speaks English. They might tell you they are a student looking to practice.

In China, and really anywhere, it's sadly best to not respond to anyone approaching you.

Tea shop is a more mild form. Lady bar scam is much more extreme I’ve heard. If a tout offers to take you ti one of those bars, don’t.

It is called "foodie calls" in New York City. For instance, https://nypost.com/2019/06/21/a-third-of-women-only-date-men...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clip_joint

I wondered the origin such places in Poland, that's how they arrived! Meanwhile it's mafia covered by local police and politicians, importing the best capitalist practices. Prague in Czechia is also notorious for these kind of places.

The difference is they sell alcoholic beverages, in some cases to the extreme. In Wrocław there was a case of a Turkish dude that died of alcohol poisoning in one these establishments. The staff was charged with murder. I get regularly approached to “go have fun” and it is so annoying. On the other hand I had reports of people having a good time.

By the way the us embassy in Warsaw has a security alert on the topic.

The only time the problem receives publicity and the victim receives minimum empathy is when a foreigner gets extorted, mugged, or murdered there. The mindset in Poland is "if a man desires sex, he deserves extortion and beating".

I think this is true in lots of places. Actually I cannot think of a society where this is not true. That is just one more reason for legalisation of sex work. I do not expect it in Poland though but that is the way of the land.

I have heard variations of this scam in other places around the world. I think it's sadly a somewhat common scam.

Either a fake date or someone in front of the café or bar leads you in. You have a few drinks and are subsequently presented with an outrageous bill, and a few burly men have appeared out of nowhere preventing you from leaving. Police don't really care since you're just a foreigner.

Abroad in Japan (a great YouTube channel about Japan) recently made a good video on the topic: https://youtu.be/NeZUOFKOUeI

They do (did?) that all the time in Poland. Hot girls will act extremely interested, while insisting on you doing shots with them. The dude then passes out (from spiked drinks), and is brought to the backroom where the staff is going through his cards, making exorbitant purchases from the joint.

Here's one report: https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/05/31/police-raid-strip-clu...

Apparently that is common in many tourist traps, not only in Russia.

I've seen it as "get into a seedy bar, have women chat you up and ask whether they can join you for a drink, get presented a huge bill", but women going on dating apps to get men to the bars is a different level. It makes sense obviously, digitalization doesn't stop at scams.

Similar to the tea house scams in China. Targets mostly tourists at popular sites.

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