Abu Dhabi Police have arrested an African, a violator of the residency law, while attempting to con a foreign woman with two souvenir banknotes worth $1 million, but with no value.
The banknotes category are acquired only by the members of the "world's millionaires club" as a souvenir.
Colonel Hammad Ahmed Al Hammadi, Director of the Criminal Investigation Department at Abu Dhabi Police, said that one of the violators of residency law from Cote d'Ivoire identified as A.B. 44, engaged in a fraud with two banknotes of US dollar souvenir, trying to swindle a woman that the banknotes were being used in international currency markets.
He requested the woman to present the banknotes to the UAE Central Bank to ensure whether they were valid against 30 per cent of their value in the event of approval.
He added that after reviewing the banknotes by the counter-money laundering unit and suspicious cases at the UAE Central Bank, the currency were found not be in circulation in the US, but the banknotes were printed only for the members of the World Millionaires Club, based in the US.
He added that those securities are sold at nominal prices to a certain class of collectors and "they are without value”. For his part, Col. Dr. Rashid Mohammed Bursheed, head of the Organised Crime at the CID, praised the unit for counter money-laundering and suspicious cases at the UAE Central Bank for its full co-operation with the Abu Dhabi Police.
He noted that the crime began when the accused contacted the woman at a hotel and persuaded her to buy the banknotes against 30 per cent of its value.
Burasheed said the accused was arrested and pleaded innocence, alleging that he was broker of a diamond trader in Belgium and was trying to exchange the two banknotes through the woman against an interest of 30 per cent.