Robbed in Brazil.....and by the best !!!!
 

On a recent trip to Rio De Janeiro, where I was about to undertake 4 days work for my client I ran into, for the first time corruption at its best, or worse depends where you sit on the topic.

I flew with Varig from LAX, reasonable flight, nothing to write home about.
Well, we arrived into GIG airport, and waited patiently by the carousel for my baggage, and waited, and waited....

Eventually I had my name called, and I went to the location describe, to be met by two very large customs officials..

I was escorted to the little side room and ask to open the case.
Apart from the usual items of clothing and wash gear there was nothing to get excited about.....

I thought, wrongly that that was it....then they ask to look at my laptop, I open the bag and proceeded to show them all the neat features I had on it...Please remember this was also a tool for my job....

I was astonished when one officer asked for the documents for the laptop, of cause I had none...well the look of glee that ran across there faces...I was not sure why....

After about 2 hours of backwards and forwards I was told that the laptop was going to be confiscated...I was out raged and demonstrated with a number of expletives, which they could understand.

I left the airport without my laptop and contacted a customs broker to help me retrieve the item, he arrived at the airport about and hour later and we both went to see the customs officials..

A heated discussion took place in Portuguese between my broker and the custom officials, eventually my broker said if I want it back I have to pay a tax.....

A tax, you have to be joking I said....he explained , that it was not a tax in the true sense of the word, but a local tax....IE. a bribe.!!

An hour later and a trip to the bank I returned with $2500 US, which I handed over to the customs official and in turn they handed over the laptop.

I did ask for a receipt, and at that point they laugh and offered me the jail..

This was not something I wished to experienced, so I collected my belongings and left....

All I can say is " you have been warned"

What really makes me sad, is that while traveling around Rio and seeing the poverty and crime on the streets, and I mean from kids as young as 5 and 6 years old that have no home or family support, you feel that these people have no hope when the country is corrupt all the was to the people you are taught to respect.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif

Remind me not to head there on business. Sorry to hear of your experience.

Ferrari--I am very saddened to hear your story. This is something to relate to a consular official in Rio. I have done a few trips to Brazil and never had any problems. I have heard stories about kidnappings on the ride out of the airport, but your story is simply awful.

I have noticed that the State Depts own site warns against robbery, murder, theives, penalities for drug possession, firearm prohibitions, but I don't recall ever reading about robbery by corrupt government officials. Since this is not uncommon, and is probably reported more than other crimes, why is the State Dept. not giving us warning about the level of crime due to corrupt govt. officials? I think that corrupt govt officials are a more serious issue than crime in general.

When I went to Mexico(I posted about this), I was robbed by a Mexican police officer. I was prepared for robbery from the street thugs, but was not prepared for this. As I have learned, the police in Mexico are very corrupt. In my opinion, I think the State Dept. knows more about corrupt officials than they are giving us warning about.

I just read the State Dept. advisory on Mexico, http://travel.state.gov/mexico.html

This is the extent the State Dept warns about police corruption in Mexico:

"In some instances, Americans have become victims of harassment, mistreatment and extortion by Mexican law enforcement and other officials."

I think out of 25 pages of text regarding travel warnings, they could give a bit more detail of how to avoiding being robbed by police, how to deal with the police, and what to do if you are robbed by the police.

$2500?? Customs Broker???

The Brazilian computer regulations went away about 4-5 years ago. You were severely scammed. You needed to mention a lawyer not a customs broker (in Rio they work hand in hand with the customs people, once tried to get me for $500 when I went to pick up a pack of documents that came via United, I told them to keep the documents, wipe their a**es with them, and I would make sure that they would be transferred etc., I got my documents for free in the end).

Although I do not condone bribery, if you do not have the name or means locally to get out of a situation like this in the future, I would suggest no more than $50 "forgotten" inside your passport. $2500, they'll be talking about you for years!!!!

This isn't that uncommon, unfortunately I've run across similar customs scams. WE had a computer spend six months in customs in ecuador -- same deal, they wanted as much in a "customs release fee" as the computer was worth so we told them to screw themselves.

What took six months was for us to get DHL to return the thing to us (since we had sent it down with them) without charging for the delivery.

And yes, the customs brokers were very much involved in the scam.

The depressing thing is that they do it because they are poor, but they don't seem to realize that by scamming people trying to bring business to their country they're only destroying their own economy...

Sorry to learn of this! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

And I hope that it quickly becomes UNcommon!

Yep, $50 or $100 covers a very wide range of violations anywhere in South America. $2500 is out and out theft.

I've been to Brazil several times and never had any problem. But then again, I always do carry-on.

Ferrari....

Sorry to tell you this...but a smaller "multa" of $2-300 US could have been your way out of this.

You should learn the phrase "Num da pra da um jeitinho ?"........"Is there a way around this ?"

I have been the subject of a customs bribe for a digital camera I had. All I did was that I asked how much of a fine they wanted me to pay and it was easy.

R$100 got me out. It was no big deal....kind of humorous actually.

hfly is right too....your story will be told to their grandkids unfortunately.




[This message has been edited by Carioca Canuck (edited 03-27-2001).]

Wow .. a $2,500 "greaser" .. they really got to you ... I am sorry to hear it.

I was in RIO for New Year's Eve, earlier this year. When I got back home Jose Magdeleros had ran up a $20,000 bill on my VISA card.

He BOUGHT two (new) laptops among other things.

Who is Jose? I have no idea, but he sure had fun using a fake version of my card, with correct number and expiry a few 100 times until I saw the account when I got home!

www.GlenStephens.com/Falklands.html


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~ Glen ~

[This message has been edited by ozstamps (edited 03-29-2001).]

Oz Stamps didn't I tell you about Brazil?? But NOOOO you wouldn't listen to me.
Sure hope Visa took care of this for you.

As for how to handle officials in countries like these it's best not to allow them to intimidate you, as most countries do not condone their officials getting caught doing this.