British

A brazen scammer allegedly charged a British tourist a staggering £1,500 for a kebab – and police near Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeirom said the man was arrested

An unsuspecting tourist was hit with an eyewatering £1,500 charge for a kebab on a hugely popular tourist beach.

A scammer was arrested on the world famous Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, after he and another person allegedly changed the price on a payment terminal and overcharged the victim by a staggering amount. The Brit reportedly ended up paying £1,480 (10,000 reais) for the meaty treat that should have set her back just £15 (100 reais). Police said the machine was allegedly tampered with and ended up charging the victim a much higher price than what she was told.

This comes as a wave of brazen conners have hit the popular Brazilian beaches in shallow attempts to swindle visitors. Brazilian police, in a statement, said: “We have arrested a criminal that carried out a card machine scam against a British female tourist in Copacabana.”

The detained man was reportedly part of an organised fraud scheme that targeted foreigners, mostly in Rio’s famous Ipanema and Copacabana areas, according to O Globo.

The head of Rio’s tourist police, Patricia Alemany, said her team (named DEAT) were working to find and detainee the people trying to con tourists out of their money, she told the Brazilian site.

She said: “DEAT has been repeatedly arresting these criminals. However, there is no oversight of street vendors on the beach, which creates an environment of public disorder and greatly facilitates this type of crime.”

Another woman was charged nearly £3,000 (20,000 reais) for corn on the cob which had been smothered in margarine. The woman, from Argentina, should have just paid £3 (20 reais) for the food. She said: “I don’t understand numbers in Portuguese. I don’t speak Portuguese.”

Another tourist, from Colombia, was shockingly charged about £400 (2,500 reais) for a caipirinha – a Brazilian cocktail made with a spirit, sugar and lime.

This comes after another shocking scam hit some tourists in Brazil. Last year, cases of “Goodnight Cinderella” spiking scams were reported, where holidaymakers fall for glamorous looking women, especially in Brazil, before they put powerful sedatives in victims’ drinks and then rob them once they pass out.

The scams led to several Brits finding themselves with money, belongings and passports taken by the women who often work in gangs in popular tourist locations like Rio da Janeiro.

Police in Brazil said that British tourists are seen as “easy prey” as they could be unaware to the dangers, often have expensive items on them as well as cash, and do not know the local area well.

A 21-year-old Brit spoke out about how he passed out after taking just a few sips of a drink on his holiday. He was later recorded collapsing unconscious on a Brazilian beach but was rescued by a Good Samaritan. The student revealed he was offered a Capriahna cocktail by a trio women before the incident.

Murray will be remembered for his razor-sharp volleying skills and the preposterous angles he conjured at the net. His returns were often unorthodox and he was fond of a lobbed service return to unsettle opponents.

Alongside his triumphs, Murray has been a staunch defender of doubles players and frequently demanded they be shown more respect.

“Doubles has its place in the game – it’s not the golden ticket that singles is, but it’s undervalued by the tour,” Murray told BBC Sport.

“As these events go longer and longer they need content, and doubles supports that.”

Murray said he was proud to have represented his hometown of Dunblane and the country of Scotland at the highest level.

“There is no history of tennis and no environment of tennis [in Scotland],” Murray told BBC Sport.

“I’d imagine the odds were against us from the start but we were able to make some good things happen.”

His mother Judy thought Jamie had the better hand-eye co-ordination of her sons when young. Jamie and Andy briefly became rivals as tennis players – and also while wrestling.

Judy once recalled: “Andy’s favourite [wrestler] was The Rock and Jamie’s was Stone Cold Steve Austin, and they used to create these bouts that they saw on the television. They used to wrestle each other on the duvet and thump each other with pillows, and create these belts and make up their own rules and scoring systems.”

Jamie is 15 months older than Andy, and as his early dominance on the tennis court started to fade Andy says he quite literally bore the brunt.

“We were coming back from Solihull in the minibus and I’d beaten Jamie in the final, I think, of the under-12s, so basically I was winding him up about that and my hand was on the hand rest,” he said in 2015.

“We were sitting next to each other and he just basically punched me on the hand – I lost my fingernail and I’ve still got the scars to show for it.”

Despite some defeats against Andy, Jamie was still very much on track for a professional singles career until a negative experience at an LTA training school in Cambridge in his very early teens.

He struggled with living away from home and the elite training environment, and even though he has never sought to blame the LTA, his forehand suffered and he has said he was never quite the same player again.

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