Manama: A Catch Me If You Can-style fraudster who conned expatriates by posing as a pilot and as a doctor has been arrested in Kuwait.
Echoing the 2002 Leonardo DiCaprio film, the conman took on different guises to shortchange his victims. It later emerged that he had also been convicted in a case of forgery.
The man was caught after a Jordanian woman, one of his two victims, reported him to the police, a security source said.
“The Jordanian woman called the interior ministry operation room and informed them that a man who pretended he was a pilot and had a travel agency cheated her of 315 Kuwaiti dinars [Dh3,820],” the source told Kuwaiti daily Al Rai.
“The complainant said she could see the man sitting in an office and requested police assistance. A patrol headed to the office and, upon checking his identity, the police discovered he was a conman and not a pilot as he had made the vulnerable woman believe.”
He was taken to the police station where the Jordanian woman filed a lawsuit against him.
“Further investigations revealed that he had conned an Egyptian man, making him believe he was a doctor who could provide him treatment at a lower fee,” the source added. “He was also found to have been implicated in a forgery case and that a court had sentenced him to three years in prison. He was referred to the competent authorities for appropriate action,” the source said.
The movie Catch Me If You Can was based on the life of the Frank Abagnale Jr, the US fraudster who became infamous in the 1960s for posing as a doctor, a Pan Am pilot, a teacher and a legal prosecutor before he was eventually caught.
