- A crooked guide is the last thing you need on the side of Mount Everest.
Climbing Mount Everest is one of the most daunting challenges in the world. Without a careful and lengthy preparation process, your expedition will surely fail.
But it sure makes the whole ordeal a lot more difficult if your guide has decided to poison you before you even start climbing.
Authorities in Nepal have uncovered a wide-reaching insurance fraud scheme targeting mountain climbers looking to scale Mount Everest. Dozens of people have been charged with crimes, including mountain guides, their employers, helicopter pilots, and hospital staff.
The guides would drug or poison their clients using various substances, from baking soda to rat feces. Once the climber was unwell, they’d alert a helicopter to carry them to safety while forging medical documents to inflate the insurance payout.
The scheme affected nearly 5,000 climbers and earned the scammers millions of dollars in illicit gains. Although those responsible have now been caught, the authorities worry the case has done irreparable damage to Nepal’s reputation as a tourism destination.
Dozens of Conspirators
The Everest climbing season in Nepal kicked off on March 30 after the Himalayas’ severe winter weather let up (relatively speaking). However, there are a lot fewer tour operators taking people up the mountain this year.
Nepal’s authorities recently cracked down on a ridiculously huge insurance scheme. According to The Independent, 32 people have been charged with various crimes, while 11 have been arrested so far.
Altogether, their crimes affected 4,782 climbers. Authorities have determined more than 300 helicopter rescues to have been fraudulent, and the number may grow as the investigation proceeds.
Summed together, the fake insurance claims brought in $20 million to the fraudsters.
Involved in the scheme were people from all over Nepal’s mountain climbing industry. Among those charged are sherpas (Nepal’s famous mountain guides), tour and hiking company owners, helicopter operators and pilots, and doctors.
Raw Chicken and Rat Poop
It’s no wonder that a lot of people were involved in the scheme, considering its complexity. To begin with, the tour operators would insist that prospective climbers have emergency insurance.
That’s actually the only legitimate part of the whole operation, as you do need insurance to climb Everest. These people, however, weren’t interested in protecting your health but getting a payout at the end.
After the trip began and the climber was up on the mountain, the guide would try to convince them that they were having a medical emergency. Some people, not accustomed to the rigors of mountain climbing, believed them, but others insisted they were good to press on.
If words didn’t work, the guides would turn to poison. They would sneakily feed the climbers various substances to cause nausea and gastric distress — one of the hallmark symptoms of altitude sickness.
The stuff they used ranged from large amounts of baking powder to laxatives, uncooked chicken, or even rat droppings.
With the climber now sick, they had no choice but to alert a rescue helicopter. Of course, the rescue company was in on the scheme and would verify that the situation was much more difficult (and therefore expensive) than in reality.
The climbers would be taken to a hospital, where a crooked doctor would examine them and write documents saying the patients were oh-so sick. Finally, once the insurance company filed the exaggerated payment, the con artists would divvy up the cash.
‘No Action Against Crime’
Sadly, this isn’t even the first time Mount Everest-related tourism companies have been caught scamming insurance firms. Similar instances happened in 2018 and 2019 as well. In some of those cases, even the “sick” climbers were in on the fraud.
According to Manoj Kumar KC, the chief of Nepal Police’s Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), the fraud has continued due to “lax punitive action.”
“When there is no action against crime, it flourishes. The insurance scam too flourished as a result,” he said bluntly.
Insurance companies have threatened to stop insuring climbers if Nepal’s authorities don’t do something about the constant fraud. Now, they’ve done something — but they worry it may not have been so great for the tourism business.
After all, hiring somebody to help you climb Everest requires enormous amounts of trust. If you can’t trust the guides, who would want to scale the mountain?
For more climbing-related crime, read our story about the beloved rock stolen from a Canadian rock climbing hub.