Picture used for illustrative purposes only.

The Dubai Misdemeanor Court sentenced an African woman to one month in jail to be followed by deportation and fined her Dhs19,000 fir stealing Dhs17,000 from an Asian who offered to donate a bed via second-hand trading website after she had fraudulently obtained the data of his debit card.

The case dated back to last July when an Asian filed a complaint in which he stated that a woman he did not know had defrauded him.

According to the complainant’s statement, he displayed a bed for donation on a website for trading in items at a minimum price, adding that an African woman contacted him and told him that she was interested in getting what he offered.

The complainant stated that he agreed to give the bed to the accused for free but the latter asked him to get the bed shipped through a shipping company because she could not afford to pay the shipping charges. Enabling him to do so, she gave him the link of a website that resembled that of a government institution but in fact, the two websites had nothing to do with each other.

The complainant stated that he entered his debit card data via the link sent by the accused to pay the shipping charges for the bed but much to his surprise, he found that Dhs17,000 was withdrawn from his bank account.

As soon as he received the withdrawal message, he tried to call the accused but she did not answer and he soon discovered that he fell victim to fraud.

According to the official documents, a team of detectives and cyber investigators managed to identify and arrest the accused. On interrogation, she confessed that she worked as a nanny but her services were terminated and she ended up as illegal resident. She, however, denied any connection to the fraud, but further investigations showed she was involved in defrauding the victim.