Six jobless men on trial over Dh40,000 villa burglary



DUBAI // An Emirati engineer took his wife and children out for a day and returned home to find more than Dh40,000 worth of his wife’s jewellery missing, Dubai Criminal Court heard on Thursday.

The 37-year-old told prosecutors that at about 4pm on November 21 last year, he left his villa in Al Quoz and returned at about 11pm to find the gate forced open.

He went to the bedroom and found an iron safe, where his wife kept her jewellery, on the floor, forced open and empty.

He wrote down a list of 34 pieces worth more than Dh40,000 that had been stolen before calling police.

After investigations, police said that six jobless Sri Lankan men were linked to the crime and they were all arrested on January 18.

“During questioning they all confessed and said that a 39-year-old countryman was the mastermind behind the theft and that he picked the villa, then put up a plan,” testified an Emirati police officer, 25.

He said that the men confessed to breaking the lock of the kitchen door and the bedroom door before forcing open the safe and getting away with the valuables.

None of the items were recovered.

In court, the defendants, all aged 39 or 40, denied charges of theft and damaging property.

A verdict will be rendered on November 28.

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Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions

There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.

1 Going Dark

A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.

2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers

A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.

3. Fake Destinations

Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.

4. Rebranded Barrels

Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.

* Bloomberg

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Dust and sand storms compared

Sand storm

  • Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
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Dust storm

  • Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
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  • Duration: Can linger for days
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UAE jiu-jitsu squad

Men: Hamad Nawad and Khalid Al Balushi (56kg), Omar Al Fadhli and Saeed Al Mazroui (62kg), Taleb Al Kirbi and Humaid Al Kaabi (69kg), Mohammed Al Qubaisi and Saud Al Hammadi (70kg), Khalfan Belhol and Mohammad Haitham Radhi (85kg), Faisal Al Ketbi and Zayed Al Kaabi (94kg)

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Types of bank fraud

1) Phishing

Fraudsters send an unsolicited email that appears to be from a financial institution or online retailer. The hoax email requests that you provide sensitive information, often by clicking on to a link leading to a fake website.

2) Smishing

The SMS equivalent of phishing. Fraudsters falsify the telephone number through “text spoofing,” so that it appears to be a genuine text from the bank.

3) Vishing

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4) SIM swap

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5) Identity theft

Someone illegally obtains your confidential information, through various ways, such as theft of your wallet, bank and utility bill statements, computer intrusion and social networks.

6) Prize scams

Fraudsters claiming to be authorised representatives from well-known organisations (such as Etisalat, du, Dubai Shopping Festival, Expo2020, Lulu Hypermarket etc) contact victims to tell them they have won a cash prize and request them to share confidential banking details to transfer the prize money.

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Although similar in its appearance, the concept of a fractional title deed is unlike that of a timeshare, which usually involves multiple investors buying “time” in a property whereby the owner has the right to occupation for a specified period of time in any year, as opposed to the actual real estate, said John Peacock, Head of Indirect Tax and Conveyancing, BSA Ahmad Bin Hezeem & Associates, a law firm.

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