Girl conned out of Dh1.7m… by a prisoner

An Arab girl in Abu Dhabi was conned out of nearly Dh1.7 million. She wanted to get a job that suited her qualifications but it emerged later that the swindler is a prisoner in the UAE, a newspaper reported on Monday.

The 29-year-old girl, identified as MA, had contacted the man online after he persuaded her that he could get her the right job on the grounds he is well known by prominent employment agencies, Emarat Al Youm said.

Her first contact with him was in 2007 when she received a message from the 32-year-old man after she joined the website, asking her to pay a fee of Dh4,000 for finding her the requested job.

Ensuing phone contacts in the following years resulted in her loss of around Dh1.7 million as she had to resort to bank loans to pay the man, identified as BA. When he failed to get her a job, she sought to get her money back but he refused to pay, prompting her to report him to the police.

“After investigation, we found that the suspect is an inmate at Al Ain prison and he is in jail for involvement in previous financial cases,” said Brigadier Hamad Al Hammadi, director of the detectives and criminal investigation department.

“He confessed to his crime and justified it for his bad need of money…he considered the money he swindled from that girl as a loan and said he would pay her back once he gets a job.”