Foreign teacher fooled by phoney website vacancy in UAE

Dubai: A visitor has denied involvement in a cyber-crime which involved designing a hoax website purporting to be that of the UAE's Education Ministry, promoting a teaching job and defrauding $4,100 from a London-based Slovakian teacher.

Prosecutors accused the 25-year-old Nigerian visitor of promoting a non-existent job vacancy which he posted on what records described as a bogus website titled "UAE Ministry of Education Language Studies".

"I am not guilty … I didn't do anything wrong. I have no relation to what happened at all," argued the suspect, U.E., when he defended himself before Presiding Judge Hamad Abdul Latif Abdul Jawad.

Prosecutor Salem Bin Khadem, who presented the Public Prosecution case during Monday's hearing, asked the judge to impose the toughest punishment applicable.

UAE embassy

Records said the Slovakian teacher, V.N., told the UAE embassy in London that she visited the website and applied for the job online. She claimed to embassy officials that she was referred to an e-mail address which belonged to U.E., who allegedly pocketed $4,100 (Dh15,047) of her money.

According to the charge sheet, the suspect and an unidentified number of suspects (who are still at large) advertised a job application as being issued by the Labour Ministry and falsely promoted a job vacancy at the Education Ministry.

U.E. and the escapees were also charged with committing a cyber-crime by abusing the internet and defrauding and swindling V.N.'s money.

The suspect reportedly convinced the Slovakian teacher that she had been hired as an English language teacher after he e-mailed her the forged job application.

Records said the claimant wired money to a Dubai-based money exchange house.

Pleading not guilty before the Dubai Court of First Instance yesterday, U.E. claimed: "They accused me of something I didn't do. I am innocent … a person asked me to collect the money from an exchange house and that's what I did before handing the money to him."

Request for money

An Emirati lieutenant from Dubai Police's section combating cyber-crime testified that the suspect claimed to V.N. that he needed the money to cover the fees of processing her job application and labour visa.

"Following thorough investigations, we discovered that the phoney website was designed in the US. We traced the chain of exchanged e-mails between the teacher and U.E. before we identified his address and arrested him," said the lieutenant.