Three men scammed two men out of Dh600,000 after selling them cars using fake documents, Dubai Criminal Court heard on Thursday.
Two Armenian men, aged 33 and 35, and a 29-year-old Iraqi man are charged with forgery, use of forged documents and fraudulently obtaining Dh600,000 during September 2013.
Prosecutors said the trio forged RTA ownership certificates for 38 of the 45 vehicles they agreed to sell to the two Syrian men, aged 51 and 36.
The Syrians told prosecutors they agreed to buy 45 cars from the defendants who claimed they bought the vehicles from Copra auction company.
The men paid the alleged scammers for five cars and were given the ownership certificates.
"When we went to the company to take the vehicles, they checked the certificates and told us that they were altered," said the 51-year-old.
Records show that the 33-year-old Armenian accused, who remains at large, had registered his name with the auction house's electronic system and allegedly processed the car sales to the Syrian men under the name of one of the other two defendants.
"We checked who originally bought the cars then sold them to the victims through our electronic system and we found it was an Armenian man," said a British witness from Copra auction house.
He said the cars originally belonged to Dubai Taxi which offered them for sale through an auction.
He said the cars – which included Hyundai sonatas, Toyota Camrys and Nissan Altimas - were kept in a showroom in Ras Al Khor and are only handed to the buyer after an electronic auction is held.
"When a car is sold and paid for, we hand the buyer an ownership certificate but we leave the name of the buyer empty in case he wanted to resell the car, when we checked the ownership certificates provided by the defendants, we discovered that they all belonged to one car, but the number of engines was changed on each one, basically they bought one car and when they were given its certificate, they forged 38 copies of it," said a Jordanian employee of the auction company.
The three defendants were not present in court to face charges.
The next hearing will be on September 18.
