Duo in Dubai embezzle Dh953,000 by faking mobile applications

Dubai - The applications also had fake customer signatures.

Two former employees of telecom firms were charged at the Dubai Court of First Instance on Wednesday for allegedly abusing their jobs to embezzle more than Dh953,000 worth of services.
The first defendant, a 30-year-old Indian expat, reportedly processed 111 applications for SIM cards and 99 for smartphones, while the other defendant, a 26-year-old Pakistani, allegedly ran 46 applications for mobile lines and filed 43 requests for phones.
They were both accused of duping a telecom provider of Dh953,680 after filing forged documents.
Financial irregularities were detected in transaction records from January 2016 to January 2017.
An Emirati auditor said they discovered the discrepancies after receiving several complaints from customers about mobile numbers that had been registered in their names without their approval.
"We found that all the transactions related to those complaints were processed by the two defendants. They worked as sales executives at external branches of the telecom provider."
According to the auditor's statement during the prosecution investigation, the fraudulent applications included forged salary certificates and fake business licences, among others.
The applications also had fake customer signatures.
The plaintiff's internal probe concluded that the ex-staff intentionally ran the applications, without verifying the validity of the documents, under an agreement with a third party.
As per the rules and regulations of the company for which they worked, the original documents are required for such applications to be approved.
Some requests for services and products even lacked the customers' original IDs and other important papers.
The two former employees will be sentenced on October 16.
mary@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai