Swindlers leach almost Dh300,000 from victim

Sharjah: Sharjah Police arrested one Nigerian and one Lesotho suspect on Tuesday, after they swindled someone from a neighbouring Gulf state of almost Dh 300,000 via e-mail.

They convinced him that he had a deposit of $9,500,000 with a branch of an international bank in the UAE, and that he will have to come to follow-up the procedures for disbursement.

The police said that the e-mail that was sent to the victim appeared to be from London. The swindlers included a contact phone number in the message, asking the victim to meet in a luxury hotel in Dubai.

When the victim arrived at the hotel he met the African nationals, including one identified as H.H., 43.

The two men told the victim that the amount had been deposited in an international bank in the Al Majaz area in Sharjah, and one delegate would follow-up with the procedure of handing over the amount.

They told the victim that they have to meet the delegate in Sharjah to take them to the bank. When they met the delegate, he said he had opened a box in the bank and said that he had to spend some cash for the procedures and also said that releasing the amount would require a wait of several days.

In order to convince the victim, the swindlers gave him some dollars to make him stay in the country.

After several days, the victim met the delegate who expressed dismay because of the complexity of the procedure. He said the bank required high fees for each step of the procedure, and that he had run out of money, asking the victim to the bring money from his country for completion of the Bank procedures.

The victim agreed to pay the first amount of Dh800 and a second amount of Dh5,000, and then the swindler repeated the demand for payment until the total amount paid reached Dh284,000.

The swindlers claimed that there is another step of the proceedings that had to be conducted through an open account in the name of the victim in an international bank in the Bahamas, where he must pay half a million dirhams to complete this step and the amount of taxes.

The victim became suspicious and he decided to approach Al Buhairah police station in Sharjah, where he lodged a complaint. Through the details of the complaint, a criminal investigation was initiated, to search for the suspects and a task force specialising in crimes, security and fraud were deployed.

Within 48 hours of the complaint, CID were able to identify the suspects and also identify some of the places they frequently visited.

They were arrested in a hotel in Sharjah following a trap set up by the CID officers.

They were found to had been using fake names to carry out their crime.

Humaid Al Hadidi, Director General of Sharjah Police, confirmed that the police recovered the money after one of the swindlers transferred it to his country and contacted the victim to come back to UAE to get his money, He urged the public not to respond to any such spam mails that claim recipients have won money and need to deposit money in order to collect it.