Speaker 1: Welcome back to Disaster Strikes. I'm Kasey McIntosh.
Speaker 2: And I'm Julie Henningson. Before we say anything else, we
Speaker 2: want to note something we almost never get to say
Speaker 2: on this segment.
Speaker 1: Nobody died.
Speaker 2: Nobody died.
Speaker 1: That's not how Disaster Strikes usually goes. Most of the time.
Speaker 1: We're here to tell a cascade of decisions, each one's
Speaker 1: small and seemingly reasonable that ended in tragedy. But today's
Speaker 1: story is different. The disaster wasn't a storm, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a fall, it wasn't a crevass. It was a betrayal,
Speaker 1: and it happened at the most famous mountain in the world.
Speaker 1: To our listener, Shauna Borsheim, who recommended this topic, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, Shauna.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, Shauna. This is a good one. And
Speaker 2: while the victims in this story may have walked away,
Speaker 2: most of them didn't even know they were victims until
Speaker 2: they got home and checked their insurance statements.
Speaker 1: This is a Disaster Strikes episode with no body count
Speaker 1: but don't let that fool you. What happened in the
Speaker 1: Shadow of Everest is one of the most elaborate, cold
Speaker 1: blooded outdoor betrayals ever documented, and It ran for years,
Speaker 1: and it worked precisely because it exploited the one thing
Speaker 1: every person on the mountain is forced to do. It's
Speaker 1: trust the person standing next to them. Mount Everest Saga
Speaker 1: Matha and Nepali Chomo Lungma in tibetan At twenty nine thousand,
Speaker 1: thirty two feet above sea level, it is the highest
Speaker 1: point on Earth. It sits at the border between Nepal
Speaker 1: and Tibet, in a region of the Himalayas called the
Speaker 1: Kumbu Valley, and it draws people from every quarner of.
Speaker 2: The world every year, thousands of them. Nepal issued climbing
Speaker 2: permits to nearly four hundred people for the spring twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five season alone, making it one of the busiest
Speaker 2: years on record. But the Everest economy is much bigger
Speaker 2: than the summit. The trek to base camp, what climbers
Speaker 2: call EBC, is its own industry.
Speaker 1: The route begins in a village called Lukla, perched at
Speaker 1: nine four hundred feet on the edge of a cliff,
Speaker 1: served by one of the most terrifying runways on Earth,
Speaker 1: a strip of asphalt that ends in a sheer drop.
Speaker 1: You land, you adjust to the altitude for a day
Speaker 1: and then you walk.
Speaker 2: In casey, I can attest to that I've landed in
Speaker 2: Lukla and taken off in Lucla, and it is terrifying.
Speaker 2: It's like no other runway that you've ever seen or
Speaker 2: been on, even with a lot of flying experience.
Speaker 1: Really, what did you do there? Did you go to
Speaker 1: the Everspace Camp?
Speaker 2: Not all the way. We trekked from Lukla to Tangboce,
Speaker 2: which is part of the way towards Everspace Camp, so
Speaker 2: kind of an out and back, just exploring the area.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 2: Most people will take a couple weeks to adjust to
Speaker 2: the altitude and then begin the trek through rhododendron forests
Speaker 2: and ancient monasteries, across suspension bridges hundreds of feet above
Speaker 2: rivers that you can't even see the bottom. At some points.
Speaker 2: The trail passes through villages like namche Bazaar, the last
Speaker 2: real town on the route at eleven thy three hundred
Speaker 2: feet through Tangboce, which is where we turned back. It's
Speaker 2: home to one of the most famous Buddhist monasteries in
Speaker 2: the Himalayas. Up and up further into thinner and thinner.
Speaker 1: Air, By the time you reach base camp at seventeen thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and ninety eight feet, you've already accomplished something
Speaker 1: most humans never will. The air there contains roughly half
Speaker 1: the oxygen. It doesn't sea level. Your heart rate is
Speaker 1: elevated just sitting still. Your body is working to stay
Speaker 1: alive in a way it simply isn't designed to do.
Speaker 2: And that's just at base camp. For the people actually
Speaker 2: attempting the summit, you're looking at usually two months more
Speaker 2: on the mountain. Multiple rotations between camps, climbing high and
Speaker 2: sleeping low a technique to prevent altitude illness. It forces
Speaker 2: your body to produce more red blood cells as you acclimatize. Then,
Speaker 2: when the weather window opens a summit push through the
Speaker 2: death zone above twenty six thousand feet, where no human
Speaker 2: body can acclimatize, and every hour shortens your life.
Speaker 1: These are the two populations on Everest, the trekkers going
Speaker 1: to base camp and back and the climbers attempting the summit.
Speaker 1: This story touches both, but it hit the trekker's hardest.
Speaker 1: Before we get into what happened, need to understand what
Speaker 1: people are paying to be there. Because the financial stakes
Speaker 1: are part of what made the fraud so lucrative.
Speaker 2: Start with the summit permit. The government of Nepal charges
Speaker 2: every foreign national a fee just for the right to
Speaker 2: attempt the climb for the spring season April and May,
Speaker 2: which is the primary window. That fee sat at eleven
Speaker 2: thousand dollars per person for years, and in late twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four Nepal raised it to fifteen thousand dollars. This
Speaker 2: was the first increase in nearly a decade.
Speaker 1: And that's before you've hired a single guide, or bought
Speaker 1: a single piece of gear, or booked a flight to Katmandu.
Speaker 1: Their permit is literally just permission.
Speaker 2: A full guided Everest expedition, the kind where you have
Speaker 2: experienced to best support. Supplemental oxygen, high altitude camps, stocked
Speaker 2: with food and equipment, satellite communication, and emergency contingency built
Speaker 2: in runs between forty five thousand and one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Some premium Western guided expeditions exceed one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars per climber. Budget operators with Nepali companies start
Speaker 2: around thirty thousand to forty five thousand dollars, but the
Speaker 2: trade offs in support are significant.
Speaker 1: For context, twenty twenty three was the deadliest season in
Speaker 1: Everest recorded history, with eighteen confirmed deaths. Multiple expedition leaders
Speaker 1: and the head of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association
Speaker 1: publicly attributed the toll in part to inexperienced climbers on
Speaker 1: low cost operations, people who bought a permit online and
Speaker 1: showed up without adequate preparation war support. So budget climbing
Speaker 1: on Everest is not the same as budget travel anywhere else.
Speaker 1: The stakes are much higher.
Speaker 2: Gear alone, things like high altitude down suits, insulated boots,
Speaker 2: supplemental oxygen systems, ice as, crampons, harness helmets. The basics
Speaker 2: GPS satellite communicators can run between eight thousand and fifteen
Speaker 2: thousand dollars for someone who's building from scratch, and then
Speaker 2: there's the tips. A summit SHIRPA bonus of fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: to five thousand dollars is standard, it's not optional.
Speaker 1: And then you have to add flights, training, expeditions on
Speaker 1: lower peaks. Nepal now requires climbers to have summitted at
Speaker 1: least one seven thousand meter mountain before they're eligible for
Speaker 1: an Everest permit. And then there's hotel costs in Katmandu,
Speaker 1: contingency funds, and travel insurance. A realistic all in figure
Speaker 1: for a guided EVER Summit attempt is around sixty to
Speaker 1: eighty thousand dollars for most people, but some spend considerably more.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that most of these figures it's on the
Speaker 1: higher end as opposed to the lower end.
Speaker 2: And I'm also guessing that this is a probably pretty
Speaker 2: good example of you get what you pay for. You might,
Speaker 2: you know, not want to cut corners when it comes
Speaker 2: to something like this, if you can afford it, if
Speaker 2: you can get away with it.
Speaker 1: The other thing to consider is not just the cost
Speaker 1: of being there, but it's the cost of being away.
Speaker 1: So you're not presumably working or making any money for
Speaker 1: those two months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the opportunity costs could be even more than these
Speaker 2: numbers we're talking about, right, So, doing the EBC the
Speaker 2: Ever's base Camp trek without attempting the summit is obviously cheaper,
Speaker 2: but still not cheap. A guided two week trek from
Speaker 2: Lukla to base Camp runs fifteen hundred to four thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: again depending on the operator and what's included, and every
Speaker 2: single person on that trail, trekker or climber is legally
Speaker 2: required to carry insurance covering helicopter evacuation. Nepal now mandates it.
Speaker 2: You can't get a permit without proof of coverage.
Speaker 1: A single helicopter evacuation from the Kumba region can cost
Speaker 1: anywhere from five thousand to forty thousand dollars, sometimes more,
Speaker 1: depending upon altitude and conditions. Multiply that by thousands of
Speaker 1: insured visitors a year, and you have a very large
Speaker 1: pool of money moving through a remote and very herd
Speaker 1: a audit system. And somebody noticed they took advantage of this.
Speaker 2: Somebody was paying attention in getting creative in a devious way.
Speaker 1: Right to understand the betrayal in the story, you have
Speaker 1: to understand who the Sherpas are, and I mean really understand,
Speaker 1: not just the word, not just the image of someone
Speaker 1: carrying a heavy pack of a snowy slope.
Speaker 2: The Sherpa are actually an ethnic group. The word itself
Speaker 2: means Eastern people in Tibetan. They've lived in the Solukumbu
Speaker 2: region of Nepal, in the shadow of Everest for hundreds
Speaker 2: of years. Their ancestors migrated from Tibet Their culture is
Speaker 2: deeply Buddhist, tied to the land, organized around seasonal farming, barley, potatoes,
Speaker 2: yak hurting, and the rhythms of high altitude life.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, their bodies are genuinely different from those of
Speaker 1: people who grew up at lower elevations. Genomic studies have
Speaker 1: identified specific gene variants, particularly one called ePass one, that
Speaker 1: regulate how sharp of blood process is oxygen. They produced
Speaker 1: nitric oxide at higher rates, which improves circulation. Their hemoglobin
Speaker 1: binds oxygen more efficiently. They've lived above ten thousand feet
Speaker 1: for so many generations that the adaptation is written into
Speaker 1: their DNA.
Speaker 2: Which is why when foreign mountaineers started arriving to attempt
Speaker 2: Everest in the nineteen twenties, the Sherpa became indispensable, not
Speaker 2: because anyone assigned them to that role, but because they
Speaker 2: were literally the only people on Earth who could physically
Speaker 2: do what high altitude guiding requires. Tenzing Norgay, one of
Speaker 2: the first two people to summit Everest, stood on the
Speaker 2: summit alongside Edmund Hillary in Night Tel teen fifty three,
Speaker 2: and he became one of the most famous humans alive.
Speaker 2: But he was also representative of something much larger than
Speaker 2: one summit.
Speaker 1: The SHRBA became the backbone of the entire Himalayan mountaineering industry.
Speaker 1: They fixed the ropes that every climber on Everest depends on.
Speaker 1: They stock the high camps, carrying oxygen tanks and food
Speaker 1: and fuel through the Kumba Ice Fall, one of the
Speaker 1: most dangerous stretches of terrain on Earth, multiple times per expedition.
Speaker 1: They make decisions and conditions where most clients literally cannot
Speaker 1: think straight.
Speaker 2: And that last point is worth pausing on. Research published
Speaker 2: in multiple peer reviewed journals has established that cognitive function
Speaker 2: begins to decline at altitudes as low as eighty two
Speaker 2: hundred feet. Memory, attention, processing, speed, judgment can all be
Speaker 2: measurebly effected. Above three thousand meters about nine thy eight
Speaker 2: hundred feet, the impairments are consistent and pretty well docked.
Speaker 2: Documented Above seventeen thousand feet, where most of this story
Speaker 2: takes place, you're operating with a brain that is meaningfully
Speaker 2: slower and less reliable than it is at sea level.
Speaker 1: Your guide knows this. They've watched it happen hundreds of
Speaker 1: times to many many clients. They can see it in
Speaker 1: your face, they can hear it in your voice and
Speaker 1: they can track it in the way that you're walking,
Speaker 1: and you might feel fine or you might feel bad,
Speaker 1: but you don't know what normal feels like anymore. You
Speaker 1: have no baseline up there. You only have that person
Speaker 1: next to you telling you what's real.
Speaker 2: And that trust is not metaphorical, it's physiological. You hand
Speaker 2: it over whether you mean to or not.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen nineties, commercial guiding had transformed Everest into
Speaker 1: what National Geographic described as a mountain business. Climber's paying
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars for guided access to the summit,
Speaker 1: with Sherpa teams providing the labor that made it possible.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of Sherpa families built their livelihoods on it. Schools
Speaker 1: were built, medical clinics opened villages. Depending on the income
Speaker 1: that flowed through the trekking and climbing industry, Nepal's tourism
Speaker 1: sector generates over seven hundred and fifty million dollars annually,
Speaker 1: and the mountains are the engine.
Speaker 2: The Kumbu ice fall alone, that grinding shifting maze of
Speaker 2: ice blocks and hidden crevasses between base camp and Camp
Speaker 2: one has claimed the lives of dozens of Sherpa guides.
Speaker 2: Over the decades, sixteen were killed in a single day.
Speaker 2: On April eighteenth, twenty fourteen, a siaq, one of those
Speaker 2: massive house sized blocks of glacial ice that form where
Speaker 2: deep cracks intersect as glacial flows down a steep slope,
Speaker 2: collapsed without warning above the ice fall that morning. National
Speaker 2: Geographic later measured it. The surface area of that single
Speaker 2: block of ice was roughly the size of an NBA
Speaker 2: basketball court, and it weighed and estimated thirty one point
Speaker 2: five million pounds when it fell. The shrip is below
Speaker 2: had no chance. They were on their third carry of
Speaker 2: the season, hauling gear for paying clients who were still
Speaker 2: asleep at base camp. The mountain doesn't distinguish between the
Speaker 2: person paying and the person guiding.
Speaker 1: And that is the world into which this fraud was introduced,
Speaker 1: a world of urn trust, generational sacrifice, and a power
Speaker 1: imbalance that runs in every direction at once. So who
Speaker 1: exactly is the person walking next to you and where
Speaker 1: do they come from? Because when you hand the trust
Speaker 1: over at fifteen thousand feet, it helps to know what
Speaker 1: you're actually handing it to.
Speaker 2: Most trekking guides in the Kumbu come from the villages
Speaker 2: along the route itself, namche Bazaar, tang Boce fuck Ding.
Speaker 2: These are families who have lived at altitude for generations,
Speaker 2: people whose grandparents carried loads for early Himalayan expeditions, whose
Speaker 2: parents grew up watching foreign climbers pass through each spring.
Speaker 2: Guiding is not a job they fell into. For many,
Speaker 2: it's inherited work.
Speaker 1: To become a licensed trekking guide in apall Apart must
Speaker 1: complete a government approved training course typical four to six weeks.
Speaker 1: It runs through Nepal Academy of Tourism and Hotel Management
Speaker 1: known as NATHAN or the Nepal Mountain Academy. The curriculum
Speaker 1: covers mountain safety and wilderness, first aid, altitude sickness recognition
Speaker 1: and response, navigation, local flora and fauna, cultural history, and English,
Speaker 1: all of it before they've ever led a client up
Speaker 1: a trail.
Speaker 2: Before they even qualify for that training, most guides have
Speaker 2: spent at least two years working as a porter or
Speaker 2: an assistant guide, carrying loads, reading terrain, learning the signs
Speaker 2: of weather changes and altitude problems from people have been
Speaker 2: doing it for decades, and by the time a guide
Speaker 2: passes the licensing exam and receives their Nepal Tourism Board
Speaker 2: ID card. They typically have more hours on these specific
Speaker 2: trails than most Western mountaineers accumulate in a lifetime.
Speaker 1: They speak English when they speak French, German, Japanese or
Speaker 1: Spanish as well. Because the clients come from all over
Speaker 1: the world, they're trained to recognize the difference between a
Speaker 1: tourist who needs a rest a and a tourist who
Speaker 1: needs a hospital. That distinction made correctly is what keeps
Speaker 1: people alive.
Speaker 2: And it's subtle too. It's not like you can just
Speaker 2: open a manual and you know, follow an algorithm to
Speaker 2: make a decision like that. It takes some experience, some
Speaker 2: background and training. A tricking guide earns roughly twenty five
Speaker 2: to forty dollars per day in base pay, including their
Speaker 2: own food, accommodation, and mandatory insurance on the trail. Tips
Speaker 2: are expected and they're culturally significant, but the base wage
Speaker 2: alone makes guiding one of the better paying jobs available
Speaker 2: and rule in Nepal. For a family in the Kumbu,
Speaker 2: a son or daughter with a guiding license is a
Speaker 2: source of real pride and real economic stability.
Speaker 1: And this is the person that you're trusting somebody who
Speaker 1: grew grew up on these trails, someone with formal training,
Speaker 1: a government license, years of field experience, and a family
Speaker 1: reputation built on the word of foreign clients who came
Speaker 1: home safely. The guides at the center of this fraud
Speaker 1: were a betrayal not just to their clients, but of
Speaker 1: every legitimate guide whose livelihood depends on that trust remaining intact.
Speaker 1: The story technically begins in twenty eighteen. That's when the
Speaker 1: Katmandu Post, Nepaul's oldest English language newspaper, first started digging
Speaker 1: into something that trekkers had been whispering about for years.
Speaker 1: AFP journalist Annabelle Symington followed the thread through trip advisor
Speaker 1: reviews and first hand accounts. What she found sounded at
Speaker 1: first almost impossible.
Speaker 2: Guides were pressuring trekkers to call in helicopter evacuations for
Speaker 2: symptoms that didn't require it.
Speaker 1: Here's how it worked. A treker develops a headache, some nausea,
Speaker 1: mild dizziness, all of which adultsitude is entirely normal. Your
Speaker 1: body is adjusting to thinner air, and acute mountain sickness
Speaker 1: or AMS is almost universal among people ascending quickly. Mild
Speaker 1: AMS almost always resolves on its own with rust fluids
Speaker 1: and if needed, a descent a few hundred feet.
Speaker 2: In wilderness medicine training, we say don't go up until
Speaker 2: the signs and symptoms go down. When we're talking about
Speaker 2: mild AMS, which is very different from severe altitude illness
Speaker 2: like pulmonary edema or cerebral edema, they all have different
Speaker 2: sets of symptoms as well, So descent really isn't mandatory
Speaker 2: with AMS. Just kind of staying and hanging out where
Speaker 2: you are can resolve a lot of the symptoms if
Speaker 2: you give it a day or two. But instead of
Speaker 2: saying that, instead of handing the client and aspirin or
Speaker 2: telling them to drink water and get some sleep, the
Speaker 2: guide walks over looking grave. Your oxygen readings are dangerously low.
Speaker 2: The guide says, you need to get off this mountain.
Speaker 2: If we don't call a helicopter in the next few hours,
Speaker 2: not make it yet.
Speaker 1: If you have a trusted guide who has lots of
Speaker 1: experience and they're saying that to you, what do you
Speaker 1: think most people are going to do? The trekker doesn't
Speaker 1: know what oxygen readings are normally up there. They don't
Speaker 1: know what dangerous looks like versus uncomfortable, and they're scared
Speaker 1: and exhausted in thousands of miles from home. Their guide,
Speaker 1: the person who has kept them safe for two weeks,
Speaker 1: the person whose entire professional reputation is built on knowing
Speaker 1: these mountains, is telling them that they're in danger. So
Speaker 1: they say yes.
Speaker 2: And remember their brain isn't working the way it normally
Speaker 2: would at sea level or at lower altitudes, So there's
Speaker 2: probably an element of confusion and muddled thinking that plays
Speaker 2: into this as well. So next thing they know, the
Speaker 2: helicopter comes and the trucker gets to Catman Do, and
Speaker 2: the hospital runs scans and tests and writes a report,
Speaker 2: and the insurance company gets a bill.
Speaker 1: And here's where it becomes fraud because, according to Nepal's
Speaker 1: Central Investigation Bureau the CIB, a wing of the National
Speaker 1: Police that handles organized crimes, the people that were running
Speaker 1: this were not just calling unnecessary helicopters. They built this
Speaker 1: entire parallel billing structure on top of the real one.
Speaker 2: Four people sharing a single helicopter flight would be billed
Speaker 2: as four separate private evacuations. In one documented case in
Speaker 2: the cib's report, four tourists on one flight generated combined
Speaker 2: insurance claims of over forty three thousand dollars. Hospital staff
Speaker 2: wrote false medical reports. At least nine physicians told investigators
Speaker 2: their signatures appeared on documents that they never signed. One
Speaker 2: hospital's surveillance footage shows a foreign tourist documented as critically
Speaker 2: ill in the paperwork, drinking beer at a cafe owned
Speaker 2: by one of the doctors.
Speaker 1: The money flowed through a commission structure connecting the guides
Speaker 1: on the ground to the helicopter companies in the air,
Speaker 1: to the private hospitals in Katmandu. A physician at Shreedy
Speaker 1: International Hospital confirmed the arrangement during police interrogation. His hospital
Speaker 1: had paid millions of Nepalese rupees and commissions to Nepal
Speaker 1: charter Service and to trekking operations to refer clients. Everyone
Speaker 1: had a cut and everyone had an incentive.
Speaker 2: So this was not just a few rogue guides. This
Speaker 2: was a coordinated industry within an industry.
Speaker 1: Now, this is the part that made global headlines recently
Speaker 1: and where we need to be precise because there's a
Speaker 1: real distinction between what the investigation alleged and what it
Speaker 1: formally proved.
Speaker 2: The allegation detailed in the cib's charge sheet and first
Speaker 2: reported by the Katmandu Post, is that in some cases,
Speaker 2: guides didn't wait for clients to get naturally sick. They
Speaker 2: helped it, along with baking.
Speaker 1: Soda sodium bicarbonate, which they mixed into foods or drinks
Speaker 1: in large enough quantities to cause severe gastrointestinal distress. Vomiting diarrhea,
Speaker 1: cramping at fifteen thousand feet with no cell service and
Speaker 1: an alarmed guide standing over you. Those symptoms are nearly
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from altitude sickness. You have no way to know
Speaker 1: the difference. Your brain, remember, is not running at full capacity.
Speaker 1: You feel terrible, and you have no reference point for
Speaker 1: what that means.
Speaker 2: The IB Times UK reported that in at least one
Speaker 2: documented case, baking powder was added to a trekker's meal,
Speaker 2: which also causes severe gastro intestinal distress. So sometimes baking
Speaker 2: powder was used in both cases, leaving the victim with
Speaker 2: no option but to agree to an emergency evacuation. Other
Speaker 2: methods were described in the charred sheet. Guides would push
Speaker 2: clients to ascend too fast, intentionally triggering genuine acute mountain sickness. Yes,
Speaker 2: they would push unnecessary medications that caused dehydration. They would
Speaker 2: describe a mild headache as a potentially fatal warning.
Speaker 1: And then there is a detail that made some of
Speaker 1: the more sensational headlines. The Independent, the British outlet, reported
Speaker 1: that among the methods allegedly used were uncooked chicken and
Speaker 1: rat droppings mixed into food. Both would cause severe gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal illness, with symptoms that at altitude look almost identical
Speaker 1: to acute mountain sickness.
Speaker 2: So we do have to be clear here about what
Speaker 2: we know and what we don't know. The rat droppings
Speaker 2: claim originates from the Independence reporting, which cited the CIB investigation,
Speaker 2: but Climbing Magazine obtained the actual seven hundred and forty
Speaker 2: eight page charred sheet and reviewed it in full. Their conclusion,
Speaker 2: the document contains extensive, well evidenced proof of insurance fraud.
Speaker 2: It contains no forensic evidence of food contamination. The CIB
Speaker 2: told Climbing directly, and later put it in a formal
Speaker 2: press release that the official investigation has not found evidence
Speaker 2: of poisoning of any kind.
Speaker 1: So where does that leave us? The baking soda allegation
Speaker 1: appears in the charge sheet or at least in one
Speaker 1: sided case. The rat droppings and uncooked chicken claim appears
Speaker 1: in the media reporting attributed to the investigation, but not
Speaker 1: in the charge sheet itself. As confirmed findings. The CIB
Speaker 1: has not substantiated them. They might be accurate, but they
Speaker 1: might be exaggerated. Eight years of investigation and seven hundred
Speaker 1: and forty eight pages of evidence later, what is proven
Speaker 1: beyond dispute is the paperwork fraud, and that alone was
Speaker 1: worth twenty million dollars.
Speaker 2: And in some cases the guides didn't even bother manufacturing illness.
Speaker 2: They've just found something simpler.
Speaker 1: They just asked.
Speaker 2: Everspace Camp is a fourteen day round trip on foot,
Speaker 2: and according to the investigation, some guides we're telling clients,
Speaker 2: why hike all the way out when you could just
Speaker 2: fly fake in illness, call the helicopter. You'd be in
Speaker 2: Katmandu drinking a beer by tonight, and the guides had
Speaker 2: handle the paperwork.
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine being in the position of wanting
Speaker 1: to do this truck and then deciding, oh, forget about it,
Speaker 1: I'll just take the helicopter back right unless conditions were
Speaker 1: absolutely terrible.
Speaker 2: Which in which case you probably didn't do your homework
Speaker 2: to show up in the first place. And that's a
Speaker 2: lot of effort to put into, you know, getting to
Speaker 2: do something like this without really knowing what you're getting
Speaker 2: yourself into.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that does happen, though a fair amount absolutely.
Speaker 1: The CIB recovered WhatsApp exchanges showing that some foreign trekkers
Speaker 1: were aware of this and complicit in the scheme. Here's
Speaker 1: what nearly a decade of fraud looks like in numbers.
Speaker 1: Between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty five alone, the
Speaker 1: CIB identified four thousand, seven hundred and eighty two international
Speaker 1: tourists treated at hospitals connected to the scheme, nearly five
Speaker 1: thousand people more than three hundred confirmed fraudulent rescues total
Speaker 1: take just under twenty million dollars.
Speaker 2: Three helicopter companies were thought to be at the center
Speaker 2: of it. Mountain Rescue Service one thy two hundred and
Speaker 2: forty eight total flights, one hundred and seventy one of
Speaker 2: them fraudulent, ten point three million dollars in false claims,
Speaker 2: Nepal Charter Service four hundred and seventy one flights, seventy
Speaker 2: five fake, and eight point two million dollars in false
Speaker 2: claims and finally, Everest Experience and Assistance six hundred and
Speaker 2: one flights, seventy one suspicious rescues, and over eleven million
Speaker 2: dollars in claims. And remember those numbers only cover what
Speaker 2: investigators could confirm. The actual total is almost certainly.
Speaker 1: Higher, especially because this has been going on for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and this is only a couple years
Speaker 1: of data that they had right between twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: and twenty two, so presumably they were doing it before that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who knows how long it's been going on.
Speaker 1: Right, The hospitals were just as deep in it. Era
Speaker 1: International Hospital received deposits exceeding fifteen point eight million dollars
Speaker 1: linked to these activities that critically ill tourist that Julie
Speaker 1: was mentioning before there was some video surveillance showing her
Speaker 1: drinking beer at a cafe when the paperwork indicated that
Speaker 1: she was critically ill. And in the ICU.
Speaker 2: The man that investigators named as the architect of all
Speaker 2: of this, Rahendra Bajader Singh, former managing director of Mountain Helicopters,
Speaker 2: former vice president of the Airlines Operators Association of Nepal.
Speaker 2: He's the kind of guy who doesn't leave fingerprints pretty thorough.
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing about Singh. The original CIP investigation
Speaker 1: filed one thy two hundred and forty three pages, and
Speaker 1: his name was in it. By the time the Government
Speaker 1: Attorney's office filed the formal case in March of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, the document had been trimmed to seven hundred
Speaker 1: and forty eight pages, in Singh's name was gone exempted.
Speaker 1: CIB officials said publicly that evidence had been suppressed. The
Speaker 1: fraud went higher than any guide on any trail. Here's
Speaker 1: the question that should make you furious. The Katmandu Post
Speaker 1: first broke this story in twenty eighteen, eight years ago.
Speaker 1: A government investigation followed, reforms were announced, insurance companies threatened
Speaker 1: to pull coverage entirely, and the fraud kept running for
Speaker 1: four more years.
Speaker 2: But why because the people running the investigation and the
Speaker 2: people running this scheme had the same group of friends.
Speaker 2: Nepal's tourism industry is enormous. It feeds families, it builds villages,
Speaker 2: it funds politicians. The investigations were stalled, charges were blocked.
Speaker 2: The SCHRPA guiding community, the legitimate guides who had built
Speaker 2: their lives on a reputation for honesty, were so angry
Speaker 2: at the inaction that their leader's publicly threatened hunger strikes.
Speaker 2: But it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: What finally changed was Nepal's government itself. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: a youth led protest movement, what the international press called
Speaker 1: the gen Z Revolution, forced out the existing administration. The
Speaker 1: new government came in with anti corruption as their defining issue.
Speaker 1: According to a local guide who spoke with Explorer's Web,
Speaker 1: the Everest fraud investigation was one of the first files reopened,
Speaker 1: not because the evidence was new, but because the people
Speaker 1: blocking it were gone.
Speaker 2: The CIB finally made their first arrests in January twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six. By March, ten people were in custody, and
Speaker 2: by April thirty two individuals had been formally charged in
Speaker 2: Katmandu District Court. Trekking operators, helicopter executives, hospital directors, physicians
Speaker 2: twenty three remained at large, many investigators believed had already
Speaker 2: left the country.
Speaker 1: The arrests landed late in March twenty twenty six, the
Speaker 1: very start of Nepal's spring climbing season. The timing hit
Speaker 1: the legitimate Everest industry like an avalanche.
Speaker 2: International headlines ran with Everest guides poisoning climbers, and in
Speaker 2: most of those stories, the distinction between trekkers on the
Speaker 2: base Camp route and actual Everest climbing clients was lost entirely.
Speaker 2: The fraud was concentrated in trekking companies, businesses that organize
Speaker 2: the fourteen day hike to base Camp and back. The
Speaker 2: Sherpa guides who spend their lives leading technical climbers to
Speaker 2: the summit at twenty nine thoy thirty two feet were
Speaker 2: a completely different industry, but the headlines didn't make that distinction.
Speaker 1: Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, CEO of fourteen Peaks Expeditions, told Outside
Speaker 1: magazine the scandal won't impact our business this year because
Speaker 1: all of our clients already booked, but it will have
Speaker 1: a big impact next year.
Speaker 2: Mingma David Sherpa told Outside Magazine that he he's confident
Speaker 2: that everyone who successfully summits Everest this spring would demonstrate
Speaker 2: to the world what the reality here actually is that
Speaker 2: gliance they're having to ask their guides for proof that
Speaker 2: the guide isn't a criminal.
Speaker 1: And then there was the rescue infrastructure. Global Rescue one
Speaker 1: of the primary providers of longline rescue services on Everest,
Speaker 1: where a critically ill climber is attached to a rope
Speaker 1: dangling beneath a helicopter and lifted off the mountain, announced
Speaker 1: it was suspending all services for the twenty twenty six
Speaker 1: climbing season. Their stated reason was that their best pilots
Speaker 1: weren't flying in a pall this year. The timing said
Speaker 1: everything else.
Speaker 2: The rescue capability that legitimate climbers depend on, that has
Speaker 2: saved multiple lives on Everest in recent seasons, was being
Speaker 2: pulled back, not because of anything the climbers did, but
Speaker 2: because of this network of trekking, guides and hospital administrators
Speaker 2: that had spent years abusing the same infrastructure for profit.
Speaker 1: This is what's the second disaster in the story. The
Speaker 1: first happened to the trekkers, people who paid for something
Speaker 1: extraordinary and were instead manipulated, made sick, frightened, and robbed.
Speaker 1: And then the second is what's happening now to the
Speaker 1: guides and climbers who had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: And actually, then there's a third. Nepal's tourism sector generates,
Speaker 2: like we said, over seven hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 2: a year. Climbing and trekking is a massive part of that.
Speaker 2: Several international insurance underwriters have already begun tightening verification requirements
Speaker 2: for high altitude coverage in the Everes region, which will
Speaker 2: make it harder and more expensive for everyone else who
Speaker 2: follows this fraud. If it costs Nepal, its reputation will
Speaker 2: hurt the very communities that the Sherpa guides built over generations.
Speaker 1: So where does this leave you if you're planning a
Speaker 1: Himalayan track, if you're even considering it after hearing all.
Speaker 2: About this, well, I feel like it's important to say
Speaker 2: that the guides who did this were not the They
Speaker 2: were this criminal network embedded in the legitimate industry. For
Speaker 2: the most part, the industry is full of people who
Speaker 2: are furious at what was done to their name. Most
Speaker 2: guides on those trails are exactly what they look like,
Speaker 2: experience licensed proud. The story is about what happens when
Speaker 2: a small number of bad actors exploit a system that
Speaker 2: trust them, and that kind of thing happens everywhere in
Speaker 2: every industry, all the time.
Speaker 1: Right worldwide. But I think trust with your eyes open
Speaker 1: when it comes to trucking at high altitude. You just
Speaker 1: need to know what the symptoms are of mountain sickness
Speaker 1: before you go. A headache at altitude is normal, and
Speaker 1: nausea is normal. Feeling slower and more tired than usual
Speaker 1: is normal. But what is not normal, what means get
Speaker 1: off the mountain now, is losing your coordination, severe confusion,
Speaker 1: a cough that produces frothy or pink speedum or breathlessness
Speaker 1: so severe you can't rest. Those are the signs of
Speaker 1: high altitude cerebral edema or a pulmonary edema, and those
Speaker 1: will kill you. A headache won't.
Speaker 2: The term that we use in medicine for loss of
Speaker 2: coordination or maybe the inability to walk in a straight
Speaker 2: line deficit of your gross motor skills is a taxia,
Speaker 2: And sometimes we remember if you look like you need
Speaker 2: a taxi on the mountain, you might have a taxia,
Speaker 2: which is the hallmark sign of high altitude cerebral edema.
Speaker 1: Or you might have the umboles, the stumbles, fumbles, mumbles,
Speaker 1: tumbles grown exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for a different reason than what we've talked about
Speaker 2: that before, Not so much hypothermia related, but more brain
Speaker 2: malfunction related. Pressure in the skull from fluid accumulation. That's
Speaker 2: life threatening. So that's not a don't go up till
Speaker 2: symptoms go down. That's a go down now.
Speaker 1: And before any helicopter leaves the ground, call your insurance
Speaker 1: company if you can. Most policies actually require it. That
Speaker 1: phone call is in a formality, it is a timestamp.
Speaker 1: It's a record that exists outside the control of anyone
Speaker 1: on that mountain, So you should do that. When I
Speaker 1: was reading through all of this information for this episode,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about my brother's friend who was going
Speaker 1: to summitt Akonquagua in Argentina, and they rescued him or
Speaker 1: took him off the mountain because his oxygen saturation was
Speaker 1: quote unquote too low, even though he didn't feel any symptoms,
Speaker 1: which I thought was questionable.
Speaker 2: I agree. I think there's a lot of evidence now
Speaker 2: that those little pulse ox devices, the ones that slip
Speaker 2: on your fingertip, are so widely used that they're not
Speaker 2: as reliable as we thought they were. I mean, they're
Speaker 2: kind of a nice little gimmicky gizmo that feels gives
Speaker 2: you some data and some objective numbers, but you know,
Speaker 2: treat the patient, not the numbers. If you're not sick
Speaker 2: and you're not showing these critical signs of altitude illness,
Speaker 2: making evacuation decisions based on a number on a device
Speaker 2: is careless. There were two Canadian truckers who eventually filed
Speaker 2: a complaint with the CIB when they found out that
Speaker 2: they'd been scammed from a Facebook post. Weeks after they
Speaker 2: got home. Their insurance company had received a bill for
Speaker 2: dangerously low oxygen readings, unnecessary CT scans in ICYU time,
Speaker 2: none of which matched what they had remembered happening. They
Speaker 2: were fine, they just hadn't known to say so at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: That's what this fraud counted on. Not stupidity or carelessness,
Speaker 1: just the reasonable, appropriate trust that every person on the
Speaker 1: mountain extended to the person standing next to them. It's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do up there, and someone decided
Speaker 1: to make money off of it. And whenever I hear
Speaker 1: things like this, it seems so extremely elaborate that it
Speaker 1: seems like they have a skill set that they could
Speaker 1: apply to something to make money in a more legal way.
Speaker 2: Right, These are some creative thinkers, some people that can
Speaker 2: really maximize loopholes or monetize things that other people might
Speaker 2: not notice or can consider that is a skill that
Speaker 2: could be used for good, not evil.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely well, thanks for listening to this week's episode
Speaker 1: of Disaster Strikes.
Speaker 2: Stay curious out there.