Gang charged with seizing $1.7 million

Ehab Atta, Staff Reporter

A six-member Asian gang specialised in falsifying and using documents, obtained a SIM card, to seize $1.7 million, which is about Dhs6.2 million from three bank accounts belonging to a businesswoman.

Details of the incident date back to between Feb and March 2019, when bank officials asked a security authority to verify bank transfers amounting to Dhs6.2 million from three accounts of a client of one of the banks to other accounts in different local banks.

The security authority contacted the victim to inquire about the three transfers, but she denied having made any transfers and said she had no idea about the issue.

Investigations were then conducted and it was found that the second suspect, conniving with the other six gangsters had forged a company licence and official documents proving that he was the owner of the company owned by the victim and her father.

Later, he reportedly headed to a telecommunications company to get a replacement of a SIM card, so that he could receive the bank’s messages.

The suspect tasked a woman to contact the bank impersonating the businesswoman owning the company and after she answered all the confidential identification questions, she got an ATM card with which the gangsters transferred money from the victim’s three accounts to other accounts. They also withdrew cash from an ATM machine in several batches, bringing the total amount they seized to Dhs6.2 million.

In a seperate event, the Dubai Criminal Court on Thursday looked into the case of a maid charged with stealing two gold rings from her employer’s house, valuated at Dhs13,000, to help her boyfriend who was going through a financial crisis.

The court charged the maid with theft and her boyfriend with possessing two stolen gold rings.

Investigations indicated that the victim discovered that the two rings belonging to his wife were missing and when he asked the suspect about them, she denied.

A week later, the suspect asked her employer to go out but he refused to let her go out alone. The next day, she sneaked out of the house and when he found she was not there, he called her but she did not respond. He became sure she had stolen the rings and then called the police.

After a while, the suspect returned to her employer’s house and he handed her over to the police.

On investigation, she confessed her boyfriend was going through a financial crisis, and she stole the rings to help him without his knowledge, claiming that he did not participate in her theft.