/ 17 October 2005

Police charge drug trafficker after fraud

Police in Portugal have charged a man with drug-trafficking offences after he sold a 20-year-old a bag of beans that he claimed were Ecstasy pills, daily newspaper Correio da Manha reported on Saturday.

The youth met the man, who police say is a known drug dealer, on Thursday in the northern town of Matosinhos and gave him €5 000 in exchange for a bag, which he later opened to find contained beans instead of the popular nightclub drug, it said.

To seek revenge on the dealer, the youth told police he and a friend had been robbed at gunpoint by the man, but investigators told the paper they suspected there was more to the story as details of the alleged robbery did not add up.

The youth then confessed to police that he intended to buy drugs from the 29-year-old but had been tricked, the newspaper said. — AFP