5 jailed for defrauding a company of Dhs3.9m after hacking its email

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

An African-led gang seized Dhs3.972 million from a general trading company after hacking its email and becoming familiar with its foreign business dealings.

The police, however, managed to reach the gang members, arrest one of them and refer him to the public prosecution and then to the Dubai Misdemeanor Court.

The court sentenced the defendant in presence and four others in absentia to two years in jail to be followed by deportation and fined them the same amount.

The defendant appealed the verdict, and the court of appeal commuted the jail term from two years to six months but upheld the fine and deportation.

The case dated back to February last year when the owner of a Jebel Ali-based company received an email with claims payable to an establishment in a European country as evidenced in commercial dealings between both parties.

The e-mail contained details of the amount payable and an account number for transferring funds to the establishment’s account within the country, the company owner said.

The company owner stated in the interrogations that he had transferred Dhs3.972 million through five transfers from the company’s account to that of the establishment before he discovered that he had transferred the money to a bank account that he received via a fake e-mail similar to that of the establishment he was dealing with. Based on this, the company owner reported what happened to the police.

A policeman stated that investigations showed that the email sent to the company owner was fake and that all the data contained in it belonged to a gang that managed to defraud the company owner. The owner of the bank account that the gang used to seize the company owner’s money was arrested accordingly, he added.

On interrogation, the defendant denied any connection to the theft, pleading that he lost his ID card some time ago but did not report it. Further investigations, however, showed that the defendants and others, who are still at large, were partners in the fraud to seize the company owner’s money by hacking his e-mail.