Swindled British tourist pays £1,500 for kebab on Rio beach

A scammer has been arrested in Rio de Janeiro for selling a kebab to an unsuspecting British tourist for nearly £1,500 – the latest in a spate of brazen beachside swindles.

The man was detained on Tuesday on Copacabana beach, just over the road from two of the region’s top hotels. He and an accomplice allegedly manipulated a payment terminal to dramatically overcharge the foreigner for their meat skewer. The victim reportedly paid 10,000 reais (£1,480) for the meal rather than 10 (£1.50).

The crime is the latest in a series of seashore cons to hit the headlines in Brazil’s most famous city. In recent months criminals have tried to charge two Argentinian tourists 7,000 reais (about £1,000) for two cups of açaí while a Colombian visitor was tricked into coughing up 2,500 reais (about £400) for a caipirinha.

In perhaps the most shocking case before the kebab incident, a woman from Argentina ended up paying 20,000 reais (nearly £3,000) for a margarine-coated corn on the cob which should have cost 20 reais (about £3).

“I don’t understand numbers in Portuguese. I don’t speak Portuguese,” the Spanish-speaking visitor reportedly said after falling into the trap.

Patricia Alemany, the head of Rio’s tourist police, told the newspaper O Globo that her team had been working hard to capture those behind the recent wave of crimes on Copacabana and the neighbouring Ipanema beach. She blamed a lack of government oversight for creating a “disorderly” atmosphere on Rio’s beaches which helped the scammers.

Despite the spate of crimes, most visits to Rio are trouble-free and a record number of tourists have been flocking to Brazil in recent years. Rio’s international appeal has been boosted by a series of huge beach concerts, including one last May by Lady Gaga that reportedly drew more than 2 million fans. The Colombian singer Shakira is due to host a mega show on the beach next month.

In a recent interview, Marcelo Freixo, the outgoing head of the tourist board, Embratur, said Brazil had received a record 9 million visitors last year, compared with 6.7 million in 2024.

Freixo believed part of the explanation was a global desire for joy after the Covid pandemic and at a time when much of “the world is at war”.

Many of those tourists hail from neighbouring Argentina, where Javier Milei’s economic reforms have artificially strengthened the peso, making destinations such as Brazil suddenly cheap for middle and upper class travellers.