Dubai: A man has lost his appeal and will spend a year in jail for impersonating a legal adviser and coning Dh25,000 from a father, whom he promised to pardon in a drug case.
The Dubai Appeal Court stiffened the imprisonment of the 38-year-old Palestinian man, M.M., from three months to one year.
The defendant was found guilty of defrauding the Egyptian father when he posed as a legal adviser and promised to have his sons pardoned and exempted from serving four years in jail each in a drug case.
Records said the defendant deceived the father when he claimed that he worked for a law firm in Dubai.
The appellate court rejected the defendant’s appeal to reduce his punishment and approved prosecutors’ appeal and stiffened the imprisonment.
The Appeal Court upheld the deportation order against M.M.
The defendant pleaded not guilty and denied forging different prosecution papers, using the forged documents and swindling the father’s money.
“I did not forge any document. I am a legal adviser and worked for that law firm before I was terminated because of a labour dispute. When I met the claimant I was still on top of my job and I did not forge the law firm’s papers. When I found a new job at another law firm, my former employer refused to provide me with a no-objection certificate,” M.M. contended before the appellate court.
Records said the accused forged a cancellation of an arrest warrant, a cancellation of a jail order and a release order, a cancellation of a deportation order and two prosecution papers with letterheads that bore prosecutors’ signatures and stamps.
The defendant also used the forged documents when he gave them to the father to cheat him.
He also forged a business card in which he claimed he worked as a legal adviser and also forged a power of attorney.
The Egyptian father claimed to prosecutors that the incident happened shortly after his sons were imprisoned in a drug case.
“A prisoner provided my sons with the defendant’s contact number saying that he [M.M.] has connections and could obtain a pardon for my children. I met him at the Public Prosecution building. We signed a written agreement in which he confirmed that he would obtain a pardon for my sons against Dh65,000. I gave him a Dh25,000 cheque as a down payment. When I asked him for an original copy of the agreement, he asked me to take a photocopy because he only had one copy. A few days later I called the law firm’s landline and I was told that the defendant didn’t work for them and that he was a crook,” claimed the father.
