Dubai: Con artists are promising to use black magic or sorcery to help free people from their worries, and police are urging members of the public to report them.

Police said the con artists were deceiving people for large sums of money.

The public campaign follows the case of an alleged African sorcerer who police said they recently arrested in an undercover operation.

The man was conning people into paying him hefty amounts of money to use black magic to rid them of financial difficulties, family disputes and illnesses.

A police officer said it was one of the oldest tricks in history yet it remained a lucrative form of fraud.

"They tend to think that resorting to black magic will help solve their problems — that one day they will wake up after taking a potion or chanting certain phrases and all their problems will vanish," the police officer said. "The only thing that is vanished is the hefty amounts of money people pay for such fraud."

Tip-off

Department director Major Salah Bu Osaiba said Dubai Police investigators from the Department of Combating Economic Crimes, acting on a tip-off, monitored the African suspect and plotted a scheme to catch him red-handed.

The investigative team invented a story where a gold trader had lost his business and was in desperate need of assistance.

An undercover police officer spoke with the alleged sorcerer, who was conning victims with his "unique" abilities and gifts in communicating with the jinn, the word for genie in Arabic.

Major Bu Osaiba said two undercover police officers secured a meeting, for a specific fee, at the suspect's residence in Al Muraqqabat, and arrested him red-handed.

‘Remedies for problems'

He said the suspect started his ritual with "unrecognisable" chants and then handed the undercover officers a plastic bag that had "the remedies for their problems".

The suspect was arrested and his case was referred to the public prosecution. The investigative team said they found books and papers with rituals written in "unrecognisable letters," he said. They also found liquids which were used as "potions" for his "black magic", he said.

Dubai Police refused to disclose the number of victims the accused had deceived, or how much money he had collected from them.