Fake helicopter rescue scam exposed in Nepal – media

Several tour guides in Nepal ran a fake helicopter rescue racket to defraud insurance companies in Australia and the UK, The Kathmandu Post has reported. 

Investigations by the paper revealed that the guides first staged a medical emergency, called in a helicopter, and checked tourists into a hospital.

An insurance claim was then filed, which made it difficult for the foreign insurers, mostly operating from Australia and the UK, to verify incidents that purportedly happened at altitudes of 3,000 meters above sea level in remote Himalayan locations, according to the report.

The newspaper first published an investigative report in 2019 about the alleged scam. While Nepalese authorities did not immediately act on the allegations, in 2025 the Nepal Police’s Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) reopened the case and found that the practice is widespread.

The CIB probe revealed two methods the guides used to fake an emergency, according to the report.

The first involved tourists who did not want to trek back down from high-altitude points. After an Everest Base Camp trek, which can take up to two weeks on foot, the scammers convinced tourists unwilling to trek back to pretend to be sick. They were then ferried back in a helicopter.

In the second method, guides exploited mild and common symptoms of altitude sickness, and then told the tourists that only an immediate evacuation could save their lives.

The guides also ferried multiple tourists in a single chopper, while supplying separate invoices to each passenger’s insurance company, portraying it as a dedicated flight, inflating claims of $4,000 to as high as $12,000, the report said.

Medical officers acting in concert with scammers prepared discharge summaries using the digital signatures of senior doctors, while creating fake hospital admission records.

Official investigators found that 4,782 foreign patients were treated across local hospitals between 2022 and 2025 in the scam. Some hospitals that received millions linked to the scam have also been identified, according to the report.

On March 12, the CIB charged 32 people with offenses against the state and arrested nine of them. The other suspects are believed to be on the run.