Picture used for illustrative purpose only.

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

An unemployed Arab pretending to be a real estate broker managed to fraudulently rent a villa to a Gulf citizen and his wife against Dhs147,000 after giving them forged lease contract and documents that he had obtained from the owner after impersonating a European man.

The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced the defendant to one year in jail to be followed by deportation and fined him the rental of Dhs147,000 plus Dhs150,000 for the forged official documents. The verdict was upheld by the Court of Appeal.

The case took place in the Dubai Hills area when a European woman filed a complaint in which she stated that she had been defrauded as her villa had been rented with forged documents without her knowledge.

According to her statement, she offered her villa for rent through a real estate broker, who told her that the defendant wanted to rent the villa.

After negotiating and obtaining the necessary documents, the villa owner refused to rent it to the defendant.

The complainant stated in the interrogations that after a while, the same real estate broker brought her another person to rent the villa, adding that they agreed on the rental and signed a contract accordingly, under which she received part of the rental, before going on leave to her home country.

During her leave, she was surprised by the leaseholder’s request for the villa key to move to live in it, but he discovered that it was already inhabited by a Gulf citizen and his wife, she said, adding that she filed a complaint with the police upon her return to Dubai.

A policeman stated in the interrogations that a team of detectives managed to uncover the mystery of the case.

They discovered that the defendant defrauded the Gulf citizen and his wife with false documents before offering them to rent the villa and taking Dhs147,000 from them as the rental and his own fees.

The defendant was then arrested and on interrogation, he confessed to the charge levelled to him.