Q: Me and my friend are trapped in an employment scam. One Sharjah-based manpower consultancy offered me a fake offer letter and arranged a visit visa and made us come to Sharjah. Totally he collected AED 19200 from us. We are here for more than 50 days. He sends us to some companies which are not relevant to us and claiming he had given the job but we are not accepting. We both lost our money. How can we file a complaint against him?

Q: I went to MOFA back in 2017 to have my documents attested. I am confident because I did really graduate from the university but what I didn't really do myself is the attestation of my documents. Since I was already in the UAE, I asked someone to have my documents get attested. To my surprise, the officer told me that I will have to go to jail because the UAE stamp was fake. God is good it was late in the afternoon and it was Ramadan, so they let me go and ask that I go to Abu Dhabi after the Ramadan holiday. I immediately flew out of the UAE before any possible case is filed. Now, my question is will I still be able to go back to the UAE as a tourist? I just want to travel and not to work again. Is it possible that MOFA has filed a case against me even if I wasn't there and I was only holding a tourist visa during that time? How can I find out? How can I have the case lifted if there is? Can I have it lifted by submitting the authentic documents and while I am outside of the UAE?

Q: Hi. This is Arun from Thailand. I need a legal opinion from your concern regarding the cheating faced from a UAE-based firm named R. I. In January 2017,   my wife signed an agreement with them regarding a job offer letter to Canada. The total fees they asked for were AED 7000, but for the initial payment, I paid AED 4000 to them. They said it will take 6 months. In January 2018, they told me that presently they aren’t able to do the job offer for me because there is no current openings. After that, they gave me one more offer that they have for an Atlantic immigration program to Canada. In this case, I also believed them and they started the program. Then only I came to know that they didn’t even know how to fill the immigration application. So I told them to stop the processing and refund me the full amount on last April, but till now, they didn’t refund and they are keep on postponing. I thought to file a case against them, so I am requesting you to give me an advice on the same.

The fraudsters allegedly post jobs online or even on reputable websites like #Monster.com or #Naukrigulf.com with too good to be true salaries and unbelievable benefits. Then WITHOUT an interview or fake telephone call interview (which is never done for real jobs in the UAE) provides an offer letter which includes the names and logos of the employer with or without the UAE Embassy stamp and then asks you to pay processing or visa fee to a travel company or exchange companies. BEWARE!

This Law promulgates the Federal Penal Code (Criminal Law) of the United Arab Emirates. Crimes and chastisement punishments shall be determined in accordance with the provisions of this Law and other penal codes.