One of them is a Kuwaiti impersonating a medical supplies

KUWAIT CITY, Apr 14: In the midst of countries increasingly buying protective gear against the emerging infection of coronavirus, sources revealed that persons or perhaps an entity in Kuwait has become the subject of investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for trying to delude a US businessman that they can supply him 39 million N95 masks.

According to the sources, the FBI investigators and Pennsylvania State Prosecutors had discovered this fraud attempt as they sought to determine whether that shipment of the mask was to be confiscated upon arrival in the United States.

Federal investigators have discovered that this deal is fictitious and that there were no such masks at all, and that two people were involved in the scam — one of them a Kuwaiti impersonating a medical supplies resource, while the other is in Australia and has presented himself as a commercial broker to facilitate the completion of the alleged deal that was supposed to be worth more than $136 million.

The fraudsters allegedly used the “WhatsApp” messaging app to communicate with an American businessman from Pittsburgh, where they convinced him that they could supply the masks and tried to lure him to first transfer the price of the deal to a bank account in a fourth country.

Of course, the deal fell flat but FBI investigators will continue to seek to establish the identities of the people who were behind the — whether in Kuwait or in Australia — in preparation to prosecute them in coordination with the authorities in the two countries.