A Doha Criminal Court has sentenced a Pakistani man to one year’s suspended jail sentence for three years from the date of the verdict for being convicted of seizing QR88,000 from a local bank.
Local Arabic daily Arrayah reported yesterday that the court also ordered his deportation. The defendant had used a loophole in the automatic teller machine (ATM) system of his bank and withdrew various amounts of money at different times in a way that made the bank return the withdrawn sums to his account. The trick he used was to withdraw a certain sum and then leave a QR50 note in the money slot. Accordingly, the ATM would deem the withdrawal transaction cancelled and return the sum back to his account.
In due course, the bank officials discovered the trick and its legal representative filed an official complaint against the defendant, accompanied by the surveillance camera recordings and a statement of the bank account of the defendant. The recordings showed the defendant withdrawing money at various locations on different occasions, using the same trick.
Eventually, the defendant admitted his guilt and told the court that he withdrew a total of QR88,000 in the dubious way and returned the money back to the bank, which made the bank drop the charges against him. However, the court gave him a lenient sentence even though the victim dropped its claims against him, because it a crime punishable by the penal code.