Pinoy Among 5 Charged with Defrauding Etisalat
DUBAI: A Filipino is among the five men who have been charged with defrauding telecom service provider Etisalat of more than Dh842,000 in mobile and internet bills and smartphone packages and data bundles by submitting more than 300 forged applications.
The five suspects — three Egyptians, a Filipino, and an Iranian — allegedly forged hundreds of applications to sell smartphone packages and data bundles worth around Dh574,000 and make bills worth around Dh268,000 between October 2013 and July 2014, Gulf News reported.
The suspects reportedly forged the applications under names of phoney clients by using photocopies of Emirates IDs, passports, credit cards, salary and other certificates.
A Filipino salesman, A.R., and a 37-year-old Egyptian driver, A.M., were considered public employees as they worked for a company affiliated with etisalat based at Dubai International Airport, the report said.
Prosecutors accused A.R., A.M., and two Egyptians, 29-year-old A.F., a clerk, and 32-year-old driver, O.M., with forging etisalat applications to sell iPhones, and Samsung phones along with data bundles and internet connections as well as using the forged documents. They were accused of embezzling more than Dh842,000 from etisalat, it was pointed out.
According to prosecution records, A.R. abused the position he was working on, and accessed the etisalat system to register each application in the name of a phoney client to sell smartphones plus data bundles at rates cheaper than the market price.
Meanwhile, A.M. provided the Filipino salesman tens of forged documents to get the smartphones from the warehouse and sell them in the market. The Filipino suspect was also accused of accessing five of his colleagues’ systems unlawfully to register a list of the forged applications, Gulf News reported.
Records also reportedly said when A.M. [who remains at large] left Dubai, he contacted A.R. from Egypt and asked him to communicate with A.F. and O.M. to continue doing what they had been reportedly doing.
The 27-year-old Iranian vendor, I.A., who worked for a mobile phone store, was accused of aiding and abetting the four other defendants by selling the smartphones, said the news portal.