Man on trial for using another’s ID at exchange

dubai — A 34-year-old man, who allegedly impersonated another man and tried to collect Dh11,000 at an exchange outlet by using his ID, stood trial in the Court of First Instance.

According to public prosecution records, the unemployed Nigerian man showed another man’s Emirates ID 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.

He has been charged with using others’ official personal document and making unlawful gain of it, forgery and use of forged document.

The complaint was registered on January 27 at Naif police station. The exchange cashier, a 33-year-old Indian, said he was on duty at 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 doubts.”

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 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.

The defendant admitted during investigation that he impersonated another man and used his ID to receive a transferred amount of money. He confessed he filled the receipt form and signed it in the other man’s name.

The Kenyan man’s ID card found with the defendant upon his arrest and the receipt form, which he filled, were seized and kept at the public prosecution as evidence.