Fake Commerce Official Scam Costs Kuwaiti Woman KD 13,500; Expat Jailed

KUWAIT CITY, Oct 20: The Criminal Court has sentenced an expatriate to three years in prison with hard labor, followed by deportation, after convicting him of participating in the electronic theft of KD 13,500 from a Kuwaiti woman’s bank account through a fraudulent scheme, reports Al-Seyassah daily. The scam involved impersonating a government official and persuading the victim to download remote-access software. The incident began when the victim received a phone call from an individual claiming to work for the Consumer Protection Department at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The caller alleged that the call concerned a previously filed complaint and instructed the victim to download AnyDesk software and enter her bank account details.

Shortly afterward, the victim discovered that the funds had been withdrawn from her Commercial Bank account without her knowledge or consent. Investigations revealed that, on the day of the incident, the stolen funds were transferred to the first defendant’s bank account, after which he transferred the entire amount to the account of a second defendant. In convicting the first defendant, the court relied on the victim’s testimony, police investigation reports, documentation provided by the bank, and bank statements. The court concluded that the sequence of transfers, the matching amounts, the movement of funds between accounts on the same day, and the immediate transfer of the money constituted corroborating evidence of the defendant’s involvement in the crime.

Specifically, his bank account had been used to receive and transfer the stolen funds. Lawyer Abdulmohsen Al-Qattan represented the victim as her legal counsel and filed the complaint on her behalf. He also filed a civil claim against the defendants, seeking KD 5,001 in provisional compensation for the damages resulting from the incident. The court acquitted the second defendant of the charges against him. However, it sentenced the first defendant to three years in prison with hard labor, to be served immediately, for the related offenses, and ordered his deportation upon completion of the sentence. The court also ordered the confiscation of the forged documents. Furthermore, the court referred the civil claim to the competent court to rule on the compensation request, explaining that examining the claim would require a separate investigation that could delay the resolution of the criminal case.