An Estonian man is just now being punished over an incident that dates back to 2017, whereby he scammed Finnair out of $20K+ in duty free merchandise, by using credit cards without sufficient funds. It exposes a vulnerability that has long existed with inflight duty free purchases, though it’s less common of an issue than it used to be.
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Man scams Finnair for $20K+ in merchandise across 17 flights
This incident initially dates back to 2017, but is now getting attention, as the person involved is finally being punished. So let’s start at the beginning.
While Finnair has since discontinued inflight duty free sales, back in the day the airline had a robust duty free program, whereby you could make purchases onboard, and even pre-order some items to be delivered on the aircraft, and purchased there.
What many people don’t realize is that on flights without inflight connectivity, payment is taken by credit card onboard, but the purchase is only “processed” once on the ground, when there’s a signal. Admittedly most people don’t intentionally engage in fraud, but this does create an opportunity, which this traveler exploited.
This man took at least 17 Finnair flights over a relatively short period of time, and collectively purchased around €18,000 ($20,000+) worth of duty free items. For example, he repeatedly used Finnair’s pre-order duty free service to have certain merchandise specifically brought onto his flights.
In particular, he ordered fairly expensive Suunto watches, each costing hundreds of dollars. On one flight alone, he purchased four Suunto watches, plus fragrances and sweets, totaling more than €2,100. Across flights, he purchased at least 49 watches, along with all kinds of other products.
The thing is, he made all of these purchases with cards that didn’t actually have sufficient funds to pay for the amount due, and he also used fake contact details and names for some of the pre-orders. So when Finnair went to actually process credit cards for the purchases, they declined.
Investigators also found that he had then been selling much of that merchandise online. This scheme only came to light when a Finnair flight attendant saw these watches being sold online at a huge discount. The flight attendant asked the man about this, and he claimed that the watches were customer returns received by Finnair, and that he was selling them through a company that had acquired them from Finnair. The flight attendant found that to be suspicious, and reported it.
The court case involving this ended up dragging on for years, especially since it required coordination between Estonian and Finnish authorities. It only finally concluded in recent weeks, with the Helsinki Court of Appeals imposing a 4.5-month suspended prison sentence, plus more than €21,000 in fines.
During questioning, here’s what the man reportedly claimed to police:
Police: “You have ordered products for flights for a total of 11,096.68 euros. These products were paid for with insufficient credit cards. What is your comment?”
Suspect: “I thought I had money. After the purchase, I asked if everything was okay and they said it was. I received a receipt for the payment and a purchase confirmation.”
Policeman: “So is it possible that you didn’t have any money?”
Suspect: “I already answered that I thought I had money. If I could pay with a card, then I have money.”
The man had explained that he had been working in Australia, where he had received a salary, but he wasn’t able to check the status of his account because he was having problems with his bank card.
Obviously this Finnair scam wasn’t going to end well
I know on the surface it’s shocking how inflight duty free sales aren’t actually processed until the plane is on the ground, for situations where there’s no inflight connectivity. Then again, how else is it supposed to work? This is of course less of an issue than in the past, between planes getting Wi-Fi, and airlines increasingly eliminating duty free.
Now, the thing I find interesting here is that it took Finnair so long to catch on, and it seems that the airline only really took action based on a flight attendant’s observation about these watches being sold online at a big discount.
You would think that repeated purchases of the same products without sufficient funds would be enough to trigger some sort of an investigation. And even if this guy had used fake names or cards for the purchases, it shouldn’t be too hard to link together the common passenger who was on all flights where this happened.
Or was duty free fraud so widespread and common that this was just an endless list that the airline couldn’t keep track of?
Bottom line
A man has finally been punished over a duty free scam he was involved in starting in 2017. He had figured out a vulnerability in Finnair’s duty free system, whereby credit cards weren’t actually processed until the plane was on the ground. So he would pre-order a bunch of items, make inflight purchases, and then once on the ground, the purchases would decline.
He ended up buying over $20K worth of stuff, including 49 watches, among many other items. He only got caught when a Finnair flight attendant saw these watches for sale online, and found the explanation suspicious, about how these were watches that had been returned by customers to Finnair.
What do you make of this Finnair duty free scam?
Sounds like this guy... is going to HEL.