Job scam: Court upholds prison sentences of two

Manama : The Supreme Criminal Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the prison terms meted out to a Bahraini man and his sister-in-law by the First High Criminal Court in a recruitment scam case. 

The defendants were found to have misused a recruitment agency they owned to cheat people and authorities and dupe people out of their money. 

The man was awarded a jail term of five years and the woman a term of one-year. 

Court files say, investigators uncovered the scam following an investigation into a complaint filed by the Industry Ministry saying that the defendants have uploaded fake documents on its portal ‘Sijilat’. 

Further investigation revealed that the agency also illegally kept a total of 822 passports and 135 ID cards at the company.  

The documents belonged to Asian labourers who were recruited by the agency through 49 fake Commercial Registrations (CR)s.

The defendants were also found to have defrauded a Bahraini woman by issuing 28 CRs for fake companies using her name and password. 

The agency informed the woman that they issued only a CR to a construction company and paid her a monthly rent of BD300, while they generated more than BD1 million from various deals.

Investigators later found that the fraudsters also sold Residency Permits (visas) for BD1,500 each and made at least BD1,233,000 out of the fraud.