Beggar fools mosque audience for 5 months

Muslims shuttling daily to a mosque in Saudi Arabia got used to giving alms to a limp woman holding a stick in one hand and stretching the other for help. The scene went on for nearly five months before they realized how fool they were—the beggar was a man disguised as a woman.

Plainclothes detectives had watched the lean beggar for a few days before they decided to follow him on a lucrative Friday, the Arabic language Sharq newspaper said in a report from the eastern town of Khobar on Monday.

“When they asked for identity papers, the beggar ran away…after a chase, they caught him…the detectives were surprised to see how fast he was and were more surprised to see that the presumed female beggar was a man.”

Sharq said the 27-year-old Arab admitted that he had been begging for more than five months to get “easy money,” adding that he had made between SR150 and 200 a day. “He said that the income is much higher on Friday.”

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