Sorry to have to report the latest scam but after years of telling tourists to always be courteous towards locals, I am having to revise that. Be courteous yes, but don't shake an outstretched hand if you don't know the person. At least for now & at least in Cabarete.
The scam goes like this: tourist walking along the street approached by one or two local guys who smile 'Hola my friend' and put their hand out to shake; the tourist shakes the hand, and finds a small packet of drugs in his palm. Immediately two police appear and haul gringo off to jail. So far 1 Canadian and 1 American have been snagged in 2 separate incidents in Cabarete. Get out of jail card costs anywhere between US$6000-US$10,000. Most tourists will pay rather than spend the whole of their holiday in jail waiting for a Court appearance. Cash then divvied up amongst perps and................on to next one.
Unfortunately this is going to lead to tourists being highly suspicious of anyone, including the vast majority of locals who would never dream of pulling a stunt like this. And if it keeps up, it will deter tourists from this destination which is not what the DR needs right now.
If it happens to you, get someone to contact your Consular rep. or Embassy immediately. But prevention being better than 'cure', don't shake hands. Probably best to smile & put open palms in full view in vertical position & walk on. That way they'll know you know what the scam is. The more we can get people not falling for this one, the sooner they'll stop trying.
BTW, 'strangers' includes the guy you met yesterday & who didn't try it the first time he met you.
This is nothing new to Cabarete, it has been going on for a while. First time i heard about it was 8 months ago, but that was a guy that I thought was doing the **** so I really did not believe him. Then some weeks later a norwegian got busted that I was pretty sure did not do it, then another one...
It was never these amounts mentioned though. Ones they let a guy go because he had a round 9000 in his pocket, that solved the problem.. another time the guy had to sit in jail for a night, and the cops followed him to his work the day after and took the salary (surf instuctor does not earn much...) The third case the guy managed to get away when the cops were driving him to the hotel to get his bank card.
A lot of alchohol was involved all cases.
What to learn from this:
Never stumble out of Onnos by your self, u r a target in many ways.
Like O.P says NEVER shake hand with them, first reason being the reason OP mention second being that most of them never heard of toilet paper.
Stick by the above rules and u should be fine.
Also a much more common scam is that they ask u to buy it, u say yes and they bust u. Very common. I guess u could feel that that is ok, but I do not think that the money for these operations helps building better roads and improve education.
