Individuals post fake advert offering currency exchange, defraud Al Ain man of Dhs35,000

Al Ain Civil, Commercial and Administrative Cases Court ordered a number of individuals to return Dhs35,000 plus a compensation of Dhs4,000 to a man on charges of fraud.

The defendants had posted fake advertisements about exchanging the UAE dirham to other currencies at attractive rates.

Earlier, the victim filed a lawsuit against the defendants in which he requested that they be obligated to return Dhs35,000 to him plus Dhs4,000 in compensation for the harms he sustained due to their failure to return the sum.

He also requested the court to obligate the defendants to pay the incurred fees and expenses.

The plaintiff pleaded that the defendants seized the sum of money he owned by fraudulent means after they had posted fake advertisements about exchanging UAE dirham to other currencies at attractive rates.

The defendants were already convicted of fraud in a criminal lawsuit, and when the plaintiff demanded them to return the seized amount, they refused to do so without any legal justification.

The plaintiff suffered several harms due to their refusal and this prompted him to file the lawsuit with the aforementioned requests.

The court explained that in his statement, the plaintiff said the defendants neither returned the seized amount of Dhs35,000 nor appeared before the court, either in person or by their legal representative so as to raise any objection or defend themselves.

Furthermore, the defendants did not provide the court with any evidence that would prove their innocence regarding the amount claimed and this would mean that the plaintiff had a valid claim and his demand must be fulfilled.

The court stated that the defendants’ error was proven as above and resulted in material and moral harms as embodied in the plaintiff’s failure to benefit from the seized amount and the psychological pain that he suffered as a result of their action and their procrastination.

As there was a causal relationship between the error and the harm, the defendants were legally obligated to compensate the plaintiff for the harms he sustained and the court would hereby estimate the total compensation due at Dhs4,000.