Average: 4,800 climbers involved in 3 years, insurance fraud for 20 million
High-flying fraud. Following an investigation by Nepalese police, some Mount Everest guides have been accused of secretly giving drugs to foreign climbers. The goal? Force them to resort to forced air rescue operations to defraud insurance companies and pocket a total nest egg of 20 million dollars, according to what was reported by various international media, including the New York Post and The Independent.
The fraud, which allegedly involved 4,800 climbers between 2022 and 2025, led to the arrest of 11 people, involved in 300 cases of alleged fake rescues. Nepalese investigators reveal that the criminal network includes several individuals in the trekking universe, including Sherpas, travel agency owners, helicopter operators and hospital managers. The script was clear. The guides engineered medical emergencies by adding large quantities of baking powder to the tourists’ food, causing gastric problems generally associated with altitude sickness. Others, however, were administered drugs with excessive doses of water to trigger the same symptoms.
At that point the climbers complained of nausea, dizziness or muscle pain and the scammers promptly advised them to go down to the valley and accept expensive emergency helicopter transfers. Once the deliberately induced bailout was activated, operators inflated the prices of operations, charging each passenger costs equivalent to those of a single transport, even when multiple people were traveling at the same time. At this point, leveraging false flight logs and forged medical documents, the perpetrators of the fraud made very high claims for compensation from insurance companies, while hospitals created false hospitalization reports, even for tourists who in reality did not receive treatment. Beyond the damage, the insult.
The Central Bureau of Investigation of the Nepal Police said the crimes had harmed “the national pride and dignity of Nepal”. But fake rescue networks are nothing new. In 2018, an investigation by the Kathmandu Post led the country’s government to promise reforms to prevent new scams, after travel companies had previously threatened to withdraw coverage on Nepal. Furthermore, according to some reports from 2019, tourists themselves were the ones who sniffed out the deal in the past, obtaining discounted prices from trekking agencies by simulating altitude sickness.
