A woman from Ghana was recently swindled by a man at the Shenzhen airport who offered to help her find a taxi, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

The female traveler, who wasn’t identified, met the man as she was leaving the airport’s arrival hall on the morning of April 12. She had planned to take a taxi to the airport pier for a ferry to Macao. The man claimed that he could take her to the pier, so the woman paid him 200 yuan (US$29.83), the amount the man charged, for the fare.

The man subsequently contacted a driver surnamed Zhao who offers car-hailing services and gave Zhao 50 yuan to drive the Ghanaian woman to the airport pier. “He gave me 50 yuan, and I said there was no need to pay so much money. I had no idea that he had actually asked the woman for 200 yuan,” Zhao was quoted as saying.

The distance between the airport terminal and the airport pier is 3.4 kilometers and it generally costs around 12 yuan by taxi.

When Zhao took the woman to the pier, the woman refused to get out of the car as she thought that the driver had brought her to a wrong destination. As the two didn’t understand each other’s language, they got into an argument, which drew the attention of the pier’s staffers.

The staffers then called the traffic police. Following an investigation, the car-hailing vehicle and Zhao were both found to have licenses. However, Zhao was fined 500 yuan because his behavior violated the relevant rules on car-hailing services, according to the traffic police.

Evidence related to the man who cheated the foreigner at the airport has also been handed over to the police for further investigation, according to the Daily.