DUBAI — Five Pakistani men allegedly swindled Emirates airlines of more than Dh130,000 by booking online travel tickets using others’ credit cards.
They are also accused of falsifying details in travel tickets and using forged documents to travel.
The defendants, including two salesmen, two businessmen and a visitor, faced charges of fraud, forgery of official e-document, use of forged document and use of unofficial documents (credit cards) belonging to others in the Court of First Instance on Sunday.
An Iranian security and safety officer told the prosecutor that the defendants booked tickets online in and before May using credit cards of people staying in the United States and Australia. In his statement, he said that they used to take a Dubai-Karachi-Dubai flight after buying tickets by giving the number of a credit card claiming it belonged to the person who was going to travel, which was untrue.
Accordingly, the travel tickets were issued to them. The accused managed to travel about 43 times in a very short time. “They would mostly leave in the morning flight and take the evening flight the same day. Thus, the Emirates airlines lost a total of Dh130,426.
An Emirati police major quoted the visitor as admitting that he and his accomplices formed a criminal racket specialised in ticket booking fraud. One of them was assigned with bringing customers to buy the swindled e-tickets. The visitor admitted to the major that they used others’ credit cards. One of the salesmen admitted to the major that he travelled more than 20 times with Emirates airlines in that way.
An Emirati policeman said during the investigation that one of the businessmen on trial offered him travel tickets for good bargains. He also handed him five tickets which the policeman deposited later at the Anti- Economic Crime Department of the Dubai Police. Part of the criminal evidence are documents found in the laptops of the defendants which related to e-booking of travel tickets. —
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