Abu Dhabi: An elderly unemployed Egyptian was arrested after he allegedly pretended to be a police officer for four decades, during which he committed scores of swindling and fraud crimes and threatened others with his connections, police said.
Investigations also revealed the fake officer deceived his family, proposed to marry his wife posing as a police officer and has three siblings who graduated from university.
The imposter also claimed to have prepared his doctoral thesis in a university, and became a university professor, police said.
The Egyptian police arrested the accused after seizing forged contracts with people who confirmed they had obtained them from him, and it was found that he had made a great fortune from the swindling operations. He had mastered his fake role so well that he regularly promoted himself from the rank of captain until he reached the rank of major general, then celebrated with his family, retirement.
During the raid on his house, police uniforms and pictures of him wearing the official “Meri” uniform were seized, as well as phones, printing tools and forged seals attributed to government agencies, which he used to deceive his victims.
Investigations of the Public Funds Prosecution revealed that the defendant used a fake pistol similar to the office one used by police officers, as well as a fake radio device.
The imposter denied that he had used these tools officially, saying that he was only keeping them for prestige in front of his family, police said.
According to a judicial source, the charge of impersonating police officers is proven, through the false identity documents that were seized in his possession and in his home, as well as the accusation of fraud using the status of an officer.
The prosecution ordered that the forged documents be examined by the Forensic Authority’s forgery detection unit, as a legal procedure to clarify the locations of forgery in them, while a judicial source confirmed to Sky News Arabia that the accused appealed against the decision of his detention issued by the prosecution pending trial, but the opposition judge turned down his appeal and upheld imprisonment for 15 days, until the conclusion of the prosecution’s investigations.
