Kerala man dupes Qatar's royal family for Rs 5 crore using fake email generator app

An auditor from Kerala has been arrested by the Kerala Police for duping Qatar’s Museum Authority of Rs 5.2 crore by faking the email ID of a member of the Royal Family of Qatar.

As per a report by News 18, the 47-year-old accused, Sunil Menon had worked in several Gulf countries, including Qatar, for a period of around 15 years before he pulled this heist.

Kerala Police had received a complaint against Sunil for allegedly hacking the email ID of the sister of Qatar’s ruling Emir and Head of Qatar Museum Authority - Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

According to the complaint, in the email, Sunil asked the museum to pay the American firm, Jerome Napoleon, who had been employed to make portraits of Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The mail also said that the firm had offered to sell the gold-plated portraits of the Emir to the Qatar Museum Authority for Rs 10.40 crore and the museum had to pay an advance of Rs 5.2 crore (50 percent).

The police said that Sunil had found a mobile app that allows a user to send an email without revealing the real sender. He used that app to send a mail to Qatar Museum Authority by picking the sender email ID as that of the sister of the Emir (Head of the Museum).

Then, he replied to the email from the fake ID created in the name of Jerome Napoleon. Subsequently, the Museum Authority received another email from the email ID of the Sheikha to transfer the amount to Sunil’s account, which was duly done by them.

The fraud was detected when a member of the Royal family became suspicious. The IT experts from the museum’s financial analysis unit had raised a suspicion about the authenticity of the email and its content. They had also found out that Jerome Napoleon’s email ID was fake.