Trio accused of stealing cars worth over Dh2.7m

Staff of used car showroom flee after selling the luxury cars

dubai — A salesman and two drivers of a used car showroom allegedly stole more than 13 cars by forging sale documents, a court heard on Thursday.

The three Sri Lankans, including the 36-year-old salesman and two drivers (42 and 49), all at large, are believed to have applied for and were issued registration, ownership transfer and export certificates of the cars at the Licensing Department of the Roads and Transport Authority in Al Barsha, by fraudulent means. The trio also allegedly used forged sale documents. They falsely claimed that those documents were issued by the showroom where they worked.

They allegedly fled the country together in one flight right after stealing and selling most of the cars and exporting the few remaining on May 22, 2015, that is one day after the incident.

All the three are being charged in absentia in the Court of First Instance with forgery and use of forged documents and fraud. The salesman is being accused also of breach of trust for allegedly abusing a power of attorney given to him by the showroom owners. The two others are accused of criminal complicity.

One of the showroom’s owners, a 43-year-old Kazakh resident said that he and his business partner discovered the robbery on May 22, 2015.

“The thieves took all the cars worth Dh2,795,000. They did not report to work on that day and they were unreachable on their mobile phones. So I informed the police”.

The owner added that by checking the CCTV camera footages of the previous day, they found the the defendant to the department came again the following day.

“He told me that the police seized some of the cars he bought. He asked whether there was anything wrong in the ownership transfer of the cars”.

A Sri Lankan firefighter, 32, said that he received a WhatsApp message about a big discount made by a showroom on more than 10 used cars and that the discount was about 50 per cent. He forwarded the message to another man (the one who bought the cars) while both were in the gym. “Later, when the buyer paid the defendant Dh980,000, the driver gave him a receipt. I asked him (the defendant) about the reason he looked scared and tense and he said because the amount was large”.

The stolen cars’ prices start from Dh140,000 up to Dh385,000, with 2013 and 2014 models.