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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

France braces for petty scam wave during Olympics

French authorities are preparing to combat a wave of scams targeting the millions of visitors expected during this summer's Olympic Games and Paralympics, they have said.

France braces for petty scam wave during Olympics
Pedestrians walk past the Eiffel Tower in Paris on April 12, 2024. (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP)

Processed food advertised as “homemade breakfast”, fake stars added to hotel ratings, or a failure to post room prices are among the traps anti-fraud police expect to be laid for unsuspecting visitors.

READ MORE: The 14 scams that tourists in Paris should look out for

For now, authorities are calling such incidents minor, still mostly limited to the hotel sector, according to the finance ministry’s consumer protection unit.

But it will not stay that way, the unit warned, saying that checks on businesses would “intensify before and during the Olympic Games” to ensure that information given to consumers was accurate, “and products sold are not counterfeit or dangerous”, unit director Sarah Lacoche told reporters.

More than 4,000 checks of businesses had already been carried out and 6,000 more were to come, all specifically targeted at preventing Olympics-related false advertising and scams, including fake Games merchandise.

Probes carried out by a total of 2,900 anti-fraud agents would include sophisticated detection methods such as X-rays of suspicious products.

“We have started to identify a few small problems,” Lacoche said.

These included fictional airport transfer services, or the deletion of negative customer reviews from hospitality websites, she said.

The unit encouraged people to use a dedicated app, SignalConso, which would have an English-speaking version for foreign visitors, to denounce scams.

READ MORE: How to avoid taxi scams in Paris

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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes’ beds are ‘anti-sex’

They may be made of cardboard, but the beds at the athletes' village for this year's Paris Olympics have been chosen for their environmental credentials, not to prevent competitors having sex, organisers said.

Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes' beds are 'anti-sex'

The clarification came after fresh reports that the beds, manufactured by Japanese company Airweave and already used during the Tokyo 2020 Games, were to deter athletes from jumping under the covers together in the City of Love.

“We know the media has had a lot of fun with this story since Tokyo 2020, but for Paris 2024 the choice of these beds for the Olympic and Paralympic Village is primarily linked to a wider ambition to ensure minimal environmental impact and a second life for all equipment,” a spokesman for the Paris Games told AFP.

The bed bases are made from recycled cardboard, but during a demonstration in July last year Airweave founder Motokuni Takaoka jumped on one of them and stressed that they “can support several people on top”.

The Paris Games spokesman underlined that “the quality of the furniture has been rigorously tested to ensure it is robust, comfortable and appropriate for all the athletes who will use it, and who span a very broad range of body types – from gymnasts to judokas”.

The fully modular Airweave beds can be customised to accommodate long and large body sizes, with the mattresses — made out of resin fibre — available with different firmness levels.

After the Games, the bed frames will be recycled while the mattresses and pillows will be donated to schools or associations.

Athletes will sleep in single beds, two or three to a room, in the village, a newly built complex close to the main athletics stadium in a northern suburb of the capital.

A report this week in the New York Post tabloid entitled “‘Anti-sex’ beds have arrived at Paris Olympics” was reported by other media and widely circulated on social media.

Similar claims went viral before the Tokyo Olympics, sometimes fanned by athletes themselves.

To debunk them, Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan filmed a video of himself jumping repeatedly on a bed to demonstrate their solidity.

At those Games, during the coronavirus pandemic, organisers, however, urged athletes to “avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact”.

In March, Laurent Dalard, in charge of first aid and health services at Paris 2024, said around 200,000 condoms for men and 20,000 for women will be made available at the athletes’ village during the Games.

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