Young man had just joined the Scots Guards.

A Scottish teenager's Greek holiday turned sour when he was held hostage in a motorcycle rental-shop scam.

The 17-year-old, who was in Greece to celebrate the completion of his training for the Scots Guards, had rented a motorcycle and was returning it to the rental shop when a woman who was driving on the wrong side of the road collided with him, according to a story on news.scotsman.com.

The rental shop owners locked him in the store and refused to let him out until he paid for damages to the bike. He called his parents, who sent the money by Western Union, but it arrived after Western Union facilities there were closed for the day.

The young man escaped from the shop, then hid in a ditch for hours. He finally made it back to his hotel. But as he and some friends waited for an early morning bus, men on motorcycles surrounded them. After the friends managed to get onto the bus, the motorcyclists called the police, who refused to let the young man leave until he paid for the damage.

Bus passengers finally kicked in enough to do the job, about $600 Cdn, and he was allowed to leave.

He said later that one of the men held a police-type baton while he was being kept in the bike-rental shop. He added that he had been told by someone else that others had been seriously injured when they were held in the same scam.