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Three people lose Dh128,000 in rare cyber crime

The defendant was sentenced on Saturday to a two-year prison term by the Dubai Misdemeanours Court in three separate cases in which he was charged with stealing money from bank accounts, identity theft and cyber crimes.

In November last year, the defendant implanted a computer programme into several computer terminals at one Internet cafe in Dubai, a programme which tracked and copied every word typed on these machines' keyboards. The data collected was then e-mailed by the implanted software to the defendant's home computer.

Among the data was information about Internet banking user and user passwords, which the defendant used to log on to the bank accounts of each customer and carry out any transaction.

The defendant placed an ad in a mass-circulated news daily in which he asked for applicants for the position of driver and secretary.

In the case of A. A., an Indian national, by answering the ad he hoped to get a job as a driver. He never imagined his name would get entangled in a major criminal enterprise. When the defendant asked A. A. for his passport copy, he gladly handed it over; when the defendant asked A. A. to open a bank account with a local bank into which he can pay him his salary, A. A. was not suspicious. When the defendant asked A. A. for his ATM card to keep it until his visa came out, A. A. gave it up without question and when he was asked for his pin number so that the accused may deposit a Dh2,000 advance of his salary in A. A.'s account, he willingly gave it. The defendant now had an account in another person's name into which he would deposit his ill gotten gain, believing he can get away undetected by the authorities.

His first victim was S. J., from whose account he transferred Dh30,489 after getting all her Internet banking details on his home computer. The victim only learned of what had happened when she went to withdraw money from her account and found it had been emptied. Bank investigations found that the money had been transferred into another account in the same bank registered in the name of A. A..

The defendant's second victim, S. S., had $25,500 stolen from her account in a similar fashion, the money was deposited into the account of another unwitting victim of this "job vacancy" scam. A third victim had Dh4,000 stolen from his account in the same fashion.

All the victims had one thing in common, they all used the same Internet cafe to log on to their bank accounts, and all the bank accounts into which the money was transferred also had one element in common, they were all registered in the names of individuals interviewed by the same defendant for a job.

Police raided the defendant's apartment on December 23 last year, arrested Yasser and confiscated his personal computer, 205 compact disks and 31 floppy disks. Police also found ATM cards in his possession belonging to various account holders, bank statements and recovered Dh23,400 from the defendant's back pocket.

• UAE