Security agencies in the country have arrested a gang of seven Asians for fraud and cheating citizens, residents and visitors to Qatar, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) has announced.
The gang had seized large sums of money from a number of people after misleading them that they had huge collections of antique gold coins and wanted to sell them, the MoI said in a statement yesterday.
The gang members also deceived many victims by offering to sell expensive smartphones to them at half the original price, robbing them of their money and vanishing from the crime scene, .
Brigadier Jamal al-Kaabi, director of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), said they CID received information that some anonymous persons had cheated a number of citizens and residents and robbed their money after misleading them with false stories of possessing a large quantity of gold that they wanted to sell at low prices.
The official informed that there had been cases of fraud recently, targeting elderly people and women, both citizens and residents. The perpetrators targeted owners of cars in public places and made them believe that they had a treasure of gold coins found in an abandoned building estimated at more than QR1mn. They claimed that as they could not sell or use the coins, they would present them to the victims.
Upon conducting a search and investigation, the agencies found out that the gang consisted of seven Asians, who carried out fraudulent activities in different ways. On the basis of that information, a probe was carried out and the perpetrators were arrested. All of them admitted to their involvement in the fraud.
Lt Col Majid Sharida al-Rumaihi, head of the Capital Security Investigation Section, urged citizens and residents not to deal with such criminal gangs and asked them to follow legal procedures while buying and selling gold from approved shops and obtaining permits from the competent authorities.
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