Swindler sought help to clean blackened notes

A 43-year-old Nigerian visitor, OOI, is accused of possessing forged US dollars and conning a businessman by claiming he needed financial help to buy a chemical to clean blackened currency notes worth $5 million.

SHR, 48, Iranian businessman, testified that while he was sitting in a coffee shop in Bur Juman Centre, an African man approached him and claimed that his name was Robert and that he is a British and showed the photocopy of a British passport with the same name. He also claimed to have converted into 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 against paying him an advance amount of $25,000.
“I managed US$16,000 which I gave to him after he with another person demonstrated cleaning of some of the blackened currency notes using a device in the room of the hotel where I stayed. I checked the cleaned notes with an exchange company and they proved to be authentic,” he testified.

The accused asked SHR for $37,000 to buy the cleaning chemical. SHR told him that he did not have the money but agreed to arrange $20,000.  But, feeling that he was being swindled, he notified the police. Police arrested OOI in SHR’s hotel room when he came to clean the currency notes again.

The accused confessed to trying to swindle SHR. Criminal evidences reported that the currency notes were good quality forgeries.

The court adjourned the case to May 21.