Currency note cleaning conman jailed for a year

A Nigerian visitor was sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay a fine of Dh5,000 and deportation after serving his jail term for possessing forged US dollars.

OOI, 43, was also accused of conning a businessman of $16,000 by claiming that he had $5 million in blackened US currency notes and saying he needed to buy a chemical to turn the notes into good  ones.

SHR, 48, Iranian businessman, testified that while he was sitting in a coffee shop in Bur Juman Centre, an African approached him and claimed that his name is Robert and that he is British and showed a photocopy of a British passport with the same name. He also claimed that he had converted to Islam and that he possessed $5 million in blackened  currency notes and needed a chemical to clean them, promising that he will pay SHR $1 million of the notes he possessed against paying him $25,000.

“I managed US$16,000 which I gave to him after he with another person demonstrated cleaning some of the blackened notes using a device in the room of the hotel where I stayed. I checked the cleaned notes with a money changer who said the notes are genuine,” he testified.

The accused asked for US$37,000 to buy the chemical. SHR told him that he does not have the money and agreed to arrange $20,000. But he felt that he was being swindled by them so he notified the police. Working with SHR, police arrested OOI in the hotel when he came to clean the notes. The accused confessed to swindling the businessman.

Criminal evidences reported that the notes were high-quality forgeries difficult to discover.
 

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.