Picture used for illustrative purpose only.

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced two maintenance workers to three months in jail to be followed by deportation and fined them Dhs165,000 for stealing Dhs815,000 that had been hidden by an Arab woman inside a small waste container on the roof of her villa.

The defendants, who found the money while they were carrying out maintenance work for the villa, stole the money and remitted part of it to their home country.

The Court of Appeal, however, upheld the jail term and deportation but increased the fine from Dhs165,000 to Dhs815,000.

The case dates back to May last year when an Arab woman discovered that Dhs815,000 had been stolen from her villa located in Al Wasl in Dubai.

According to the victim, she hid her money inside a small waste container on the roof of her villa before leaving the country on vacation.

As soon as she came back, she discovered that the amount disappeared and consequently she filed a complaint with the police and a team of detectives initiated their investigations.

According to the official documents, the team gathered evidences and checked the surveillance cameras in the villa to find that two air-conditioning maintenance workers entered the villa at the request of the concerned maintenance company.

The team arrested the workers and found Dhs54,000 in their possession.

On interrogation, the suspects confessed to having found Dhs815,000 inside a waste container on the roof of a villa for which they were carrying maintenance work and decided to divide the amounts in equal halves.

One of the suspects said he remitted Dhs345,000 to his family abroad, while the second admitted that the seized amount was part of the stolen money and that he remitted Dhs322,000 to his family in his home country.

After the money that the defendants remitted to their families abroad had been recovered, the Court of First Instance ordered them to be imprisoned and subsequently deported and fined them Dhs165,000. Money is the subject of the crime.

The Public Prosecution, however, did not accept the verdict and appealed against it and consequently the Court of Appeal upheld the jail term but increased the fine to Dhs815,000, this being the full amount of the stolen money.