Fake Chicago cabbie scams student from China for $4200
A taxi driver in Chicago allegedly scammed a Chinese student out of $4,200 for a ride to college.
The unnamed 18-year-old student had arrived at O’Hare airport on the western edge of the Windy City, and was heading to the University of Illinois’s flagship campus in Urbana-Champaign some 130 miles south.
The student was expecting to catch a bus that would have taken some 130 miles south to Champaign, reports WGN. Police say a man approached the student at the airport at some point and convinced him that the bus wasn’t coming.
The not-very-nice man then offered the gullible student a ride to campus for $1,000. The man then raised the price well over 300 percent, charging the student $4,200 once they got to Champaign.
A police official told WGN that a cab ride from Chicago to Champaign is typically about $300.
Police at the University of Illinois and Chicago police are now working to nab the fake taxi driver.
“The culture is somewhat different there than it is for law enforcement in this area, and we also do some programming with international students on avoiding scams and being victims of crime,” university police spokesman Tom Geis told KMOV, the CBS affiliate in St. Louis.
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