SCAMMERS posing as staff are trying to charge drivers at the Gibraltar border an entrance fee three months after the frontier fence came down.
The practice was first reported in early August, two weeks after the border opened up on July 15, and both Gibraltar and Spanish authorities said they were working to stamp it out.
But new video sent to The Olive Press today shows what appears to be a scammer dressed in a shirt and chinos with a blue lanyard trying it on with a driver heading towards Gibraltar.
In the video, the man can be seen talking to the driver before scurrying away with something in his hand.
READ MORE: Gibraltar leader Fabian Picardo ties the knot in low-key ceremony weeks before leaving office
When someone starts to shout, the man begins to run off camera and into the maze of housing apartments that occupy the road opposite the border.
A bilingual sign cable-tied to the fence of the car park next to the crossing in La Linea warns drivers not to hand over their money and pay at a machine.
“Do not give money to strangers or unauthorised staff on the street. Use only automatic machines,” it reads in English, alongside the Policia Nacional emergency number 091 and the words ‘Payment only at the machine!’
A witness told the Olive Press the scammers appear for just five to 10 minutes at a time, trying their luck on a handful of drivers before vanishing.
Locals have learned to spot them, though, because ‘everyone knows what they’re up to’, the witness said.
“Someone started shouting, and there’s a ruckus, and then the guy legged it,” the resident said of the latest attempt.
The Royal Gibraltar Police said it is working with the Spanish authorities to ensure this crime is curbed back in August, according to the Gibraltar Chronicle.
“We are working together with Spanish Law Enforcement Agencies to address this by sharing intelligence and information of the identified individuals,” a spokesperson said at the time.
The trick has outlived a sweeping change at the frontier, where the fence came down on July 15 under a treaty between the EU and the UK and passport checks moved to Gibraltar’s airport and port.
Gibraltar’s government has promised ‘a permanent and significant law enforcement presence’ on the 150-metre open stretch where pedestrians cross, backed by CCTV, facial recognition cameras and 4×4 patrols.
But the Gibraltar border scam is far older than the new crossing, with fraudsters known locally as varillas at their peak in the late 1990s, until they were driven off the avenue leading to Gibraltar in summer 2001.
Warning signs in several languages had stood on the town’s main avenues for four years before they were taken down that October, and the scammers then stayed away for more than a decade, according to Cadiz daily Europa Sur.
When they returned in December 2013, one charged a driver €10 for a ticket that supposedly let him into the British territory.
Months later, in July 2014, two men wearing home-made ID badges round their necks charged tourists €20 to scrawl ‘OK’ on their windscreens in permanent marker, claiming it allowed them to park anywhere in Gibraltar.
No fee to cross the border has ever existed, yet the con was common enough for the insurer AIG to list it in 2016 among eight scams targeting tourists in Europe.
As for the scammers chased off the car park today, the witness said: “In another hour, they’ll probably be back.”
Click here to read more Gibraltar News from The Olive Press.
