Tour & Activity Scams in Tijuana

Dental and Medical Tourism Bait-and-Switch

Tijuana attracts hundreds of thousands of American medical tourists annually for low-cost dental work, implants, and prescription drugs. A documented pattern involves clinics advertising low prices online or via street touters, then inflating costs once the patient is mid-procedure and cannot walk away. A 2024 audit of Tijuana's border fast-lane medical program found that 48% of registered medical providers were fraudulent — either never operating or having closed years earlier. Unlicensed practitioners operating from unmarked offices near the dental tourism corridor on Avenida Revolución and Zona Río have been documented by Tucson media and US Embassy warnings.