Three women and two men were found not guilty by the Court of Appeal in Dubai. The original court had acquitted them of conspiring to lure an Asian man with a picture of a woman, agreeing to meet at one of their apartments for a massage. However, after the session, the women and men robbed and assaulted the man, forcing him to reveal secret data numbers. Two credit cards.
For their crimes, which included assault, wrongful detention, and forced stealing, the Court of Appeal sentenced the offenders to two years in jail and fined them 44,900 dirhams.
The defendants were indicted by the Public Prosecution for unlawfully detaining the victim and engaging in subterfuge. The victim had contacted the number listed in the advertisement for a massage service through the "WhatsApp" app, and the defendants had verified the information in the ad. The moment he stepped foot in the flat, they dragged him inside, locked the door behind him, and proceeded to steal his wallet, which had 900 dirhams. They had previously requested him to come there. They attacked him when he refused to allow them take the movables; they then photographed and sent him photos of the two bank cards they had stolen from his wallet. He transferred 44,000 dirhams to another defendant over WhatsApp.
According to the victim's statement given to the Public Prosecution during their investigations, he had seen a Facebook ad for a European woman offering massage services for 500 dirhams the day before the incident. He contacted her over WhatsApp to get the address, and upon reaching the agreed-upon spot, he rang the bell. After someone helped him unlock the door, he heard a woman's voice behind it beckoning him inside; she promptly shut the door after him. He went on to say that after the woman had him in her grasp, two other women of the same nationality dragged him into a room. A man of the same nationality then arrived, searched him, found 900 dirhams, and snatched the phone from him violently. He mentioned that he attempted to fight them off and retrieve his belongings, but they restrained him. They then had him open his phone's banking app and tried to force him to transfer funds multiple times, but he was unsuccessful. Finally, they removed his two bank cards from his wallet and asked him for the PIN numbers. After he stepped outside for twenty minutes, he returned to tell him the number was wrong; he then gave him the right one.
The victim went on to say that the accused had contacted one of the individuals by phone, given him the passwords to the two cards, and then shared a photo of them via WhatsApp. Twenty minutes later, he reappeared from outside, told the females to get out of the apartment, took back his phone, wallet, and bank cards, and ran away.
After he made sure the place was empty, he left, called his friends to explain what happened, and then contacted the police. While at the center, he used the bank app to check his account and found that they had taken money out of his balance while he was there.
An eyewitness told the police that a group was assembled to find the criminals by following their methods of operation. The investigation revealed that they were involved in multiple crimes simultaneously, and their whereabouts were found in another emirate. In order to coordinate with the police there, they were apprehended.
It was discovered that the fifth accused—who was not in the apartment—took 14,500 dirhams from an ATM using the first bank card, while the second accused withdrew 29,500 dirhams and bought mobile phones online. According to the witness, the victim was shown the four criminals in a diagnostic queue, and he identified each one. The witness also mentioned that the defendants were found with large sums of money and many cell phones upon their detention.
Due to its lack of faith in the evidence and the defendants' insistence on denial, the court of first instance acquitted the five individuals after reviewing the case. After hearing an appeal from the Public Prosecution, the Court of Appeal determined that the lower court's decision had not cast doubt on the case's essential features and upheld the conviction and imprisonment of the five defendants. They were all fined 44,900 dirhams, deported, and sentenced to two years in prison. The discrimination phase of the litigation has not yet concluded.
