Photo used for illustrative purpose.

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced an African to five years in jail to be followed by deportation and fined him Dhs3.154 million for swindling the same amount of the fine from a Gulf woman after getting acquainted with her through a website specialising in dating and marriage requests.

The defendant was able to deceive the victim over six years by pretending that he was a Gulf citizen having a prestigious job in a marine field but failed to pay some due amounts because his account had been frozen.

The defendant also impersonated a judge who was trying her virtual lover and in this capacity he communicated with the victim via WhatsApp and asked her for more money to pay off her lover’s debts and save him from remaining in prison. He even threatened to arrest her if she did not deposited the requested amount into a bank account belonging to another person.

The court ordered the electronic device used in the crime to be seized and confiscated and the crime-related electronic information and data to be deleted.

The case dated back to the period between 2018 and this year when the victim got acquainted with the defendant through a dating and marriage website and he wooed her and took advantage of her desire to get married to a fellow young man.

The victim stated in the interrogations that the defendant had impersonated a fellow young man working in a marine field, adding that he took advantage of their consolidated relationship to ask her to help him with some financial matters because his bank account had been frozen.

Based on this, he asked her to transfer sums of money to another person’s account, and she agreed and remitted the requested funds to him, she said.

The defendant, however, kept requesting funds to be transferred to bank accounts that he alleged to be belonging to other people who were helping him solve his accumulated financial problems, she added, noting that she used to comply with his repeated requests until she declined his last request to transfer other amounts.

She was once surprised by a WhatsApp message from another number telling her that the sender was a judge looking into the case of her virtual lover and asking her to transfer sums of money to a bank account, she said, adding that after she declined his request, the sender threatened that he would arrest and imprison her. At this point, she informed the police accordingly.

A policeman stated in the interrogations that after gathering inferences, he managed to identify the defendant, an African who initially impersonated a Gulf citizen and then a judge using a phone number in his name. He also used bank accounts of other people to swindle the victim’s money. He was arrested and the owners of the bank accounts used in the crime were interrogated.

According to a witness in the case, the defendant, who was staying with him in a shared residence, asked for his account number to use it for receiving money as his account had been frozen.

He agreed and provided the defendant with his bank account number, he said, adding that some Dhs941,000 was received from November last year until February this year.

On interrogation, the defendant admitted that he had swindled money from the victim but denied he had impersonated a Gulf citizen and a judge. He also denied he had threatened to imprison or arrest the victim.