Man jailed for bid to collect Dh11,000 using another's ID card in Dubai

Dubai - An alert cashier confronted the man and called the police.

A 34-year-old unemployed Nigerian, who impersonated another man and tried to collect Dh11,000 in cash at a currency exchange outlet by using his ID card, has been sentenced to three months in jail to be followed by deportation.

The Court of First Instance found the Nigerian guilty of charges including using others' official personal document and making unlawful gain of it, forgery and use of forged document.

The documents used by the defendant, which included the Kenyan man's ID card found with him and the receipt form he filled, were ordered confiscated by the court.

According to public prosecution records, the Nigerian man used the Kenyan's Emirates ID by showing it to an employee at a money exchange office to collect a cash transfer pretending to be him.

He filled a money receipt form with the victim's details and faked his signature thereon.

The complaint was registered on January 27 at Naif police station.

The exchange cashier, a 33-year-old Indian, said he was on duty around 7pm when an African man came to their office to collect a money transfer worth Dh11,000.

"He said the money had been sent from Saudi Arabia. He produced an ID belonging to a Kenyan man. I checked the form he had just filled. There was indeed a sum of money that had been sent but he raised my suspicion."

The cashier, who speaks a little Kenyan, talked to the defendant in that language. "He did not answer but rather spoke on his phone in another language. Besides, he did not look like the man in the photo on the ID. I told him that the ID card holder should come in person to collect the transferred money. But as he insisted he was the same person. I told him to wait because I would call the police," the cashier told the investigating prosecutor.