4 Tourist Scams in Antwerp

Two women with a baby buggy work Antwerpen-Centraal between 2pm and 5pm with a grocery-pay scam that ends at 40 to 60 EUR per mark.

They linger near the departure board and the Pelikaanstraat exit by Panos, Capri Coffee, and the Louis Delhaize supermarket, approach women walking alone or older tourists, and ask in English if you'll buy groceries for them and the baby because they have no money.

The pivot happens inside the supermarket. The woman fills a basket with high-margin items — energy drinks, premium baby formula, meat trays — and turns hostile if you push back on the total. A 2025 Reddit thread with 374 upvotes documented the back-end refund: after you pay and leave, the women return the goods to the same supermarket for a cash refund. A separate 35-upvote thread documented a 43.60 EUR McDonald's variant where the buggy-mom asked for food rather than groceries, and one cashier said the scammer had hit five or six other tourists that same afternoon.

A Meir-pedestrian-zone variant runs roughly twenty Ukrainian-speaking women using NAN 3 Pro baby formula as the prop. They stop you on Meir, beg for formula, wait outside the shop while you pay, then return the formula for cash after you leave. The script is rehearsed and the targeting is gendered — these scammers almost never approach men alone or groups.

The defense is operational: politely refuse and walk on, and call the Securail tip line if you want to report a live encounter. Refuse all grocery, baby-formula, or food-buying requests from strangers with a buggy at Centraal, Pelikaanstraat, or Meir — call Securail on 0800 30 230 to report a live encounter at the station.

Two well-dressed men at Antwerpen-Centraal stop tourists with a rehearsed story about needing 500 EUR cash for a FlixBus and a flight to Lyon, claiming they have hit their bank withdrawal limit.

They show you a Revolut transfer of 500 EUR queued on their phone, hand over WhatsApp and Instagram contacts, and promise the money will land in your account within two days.

The pivot is the cancelled transfer. A 2025 Reddit thread with 152 upvotes documented the script exactly: the moment the tourist refused, the men cancelled the queued Revolut transfer and unfollowed the Instagram account, which had only one follower and one following. A second 2025 thread captured a Meir variant where the same script ran with a London FlixBus destination and a 40 EUR ticket pretext that escalated to 500 EUR once the mark engaged.

The mechanism works because the Revolut display is real but the transfer is reversible inside the app for two days. By the time the supposed transfer fails, the tourist is on a train to Brussels and cannot easily contest from abroad. A FlixBus ticket from Antwerpen-Centraal to Brussels Airport sells for around 5 EUR online and Lyon flights start at roughly 120 EUR — the 500 EUR ask is the tell that the story is a script, not a need.

The defense is single-step: never give cash to a stranger at a train station regardless of the prop, the contact details, or the displayed transfer. Refuse all cash requests from strangers at Antwerpen-Centraal, Meir, or any Belgian station — a queued Revolut transfer can be cancelled inside two days, and FlixBus and Lyon flights cost a fraction of any 500 EUR ask.

The street-front diamond and gold shops on Pelikaanstraat, Hoveniersstraat, and Rijfstraat run a 500-percent retail markup on tourists who do not know the wholesale baseline.

A 2025 Reddit thread with 63 upvotes documented the pattern: locals describe the storefronts as legitimate retailers selling crappy jewelry at five-times-or-more markup, with very pushy sales staff who try to scam you on price if you do not know any better.

The pivot is the appraisal-out-the-door. A 2025 Reddit thread with 37 upvotes from a self-identified Pelikaanstraat shop owner spelled out the rule directly: never buy diamonds in front of Centraal Station without an HRD or GIA certificate, and any refusal to provide a third-party certificate is a signal to walk out. A separate Diamonds-subreddit post documented a tourist who paid premium prices for stones the certificate later showed were lab-grown SI clarity rather than the natural VS clarity quoted at the counter.

The regulatory backdrop confirms the lab-grown disclosure question is now contested at the discount end of the market. A 2025 HLN article on a Zeeman 29.99-EUR lab-grown-diamond stunt reported that even high-street retailers are now selling lab-grown stones at supermarket prices, which makes the unmarked Pelikaanstraat shopfronts that quote natural-stone prices for unspecified material a sharper risk than five years ago.

The defense is documentation. Buy only from members of the AWDC (Antwerp's diamond trade council) directory or from shops that issue HRD or GIA certificates with the stone, and walk out of any shop that pressures a same-day cash purchase. Buy diamonds only from AWDC (Antwerp's diamond trade council) directory members and refuse any Pelikaanstraat or Hoveniersstraat shop that will not issue an HRD or GIA certificate with the stone.

De Lijn tram and bus card readers in Antwerp tap-accept foreign Visa and Mastercards with a green checkmark, then sometimes drop the charge and leave the passenger facing a 127 EUR inspector fine.

A 2026 Reddit thread with 28 upvotes documented the exact failure mode: a Guatemalan-card payment showed accepted and green-checked at boarding both ways, the inspector found no record on either ride, and the 128 EUR fine arrived at an old address with no path to appeal.

The regulatory backdrop matters. A 2025 Reddit thread with 89 upvotes covering a Nieuwsblad article confirmed De Lijn raised first-offense adult fines from 107 EUR to 127 EUR effective 2025, and started fining holders of active subscriptions who simply forgot to scan their Mobib card on boarding. A 2024 Reddit thread with 136 upvotes documented a 100-plus-EUR fine for a passenger whose 4G briefly dropped out and prevented the De Lijn app from confirming the active ticket on the inspector's scanner.

The trap for foreign tourists is structural. Foreign card-payment settlement runs through Worldline and other processors and can take days or weeks to settle, while the inspector's scanner queries De Lijn's local database in real time. The accepted-sound at boarding does not prove the charge will land — it proves only that the reader saw the card. The Bruzz-newspaper position that De Lijn should stop fining passengers when the scanner fails has not yet translated into reliable on-the-spot dismissal.

The defense is to buy a paper or QR ticket at a vending machine or via the De Lijn app before boarding, never tap a foreign card directly. Buy a paper or QR De Lijn ticket at the station vending machine or via the De Lijn app before boarding — the on-board reader's green checkmark does not guarantee a foreign card will settle in the De Lijn database.