The attraction of dining with a prince from the Middle East has cost a young woman from the city Rs 5 lakh who found out too late that she had been duped by a fraudster.
Illustration by Varghese Kallada
Chennai:
Kavitha (name changed), a clinical psychologist, regularly followed the Twitter handle (verified) of Dubai’s King Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (@HHShkMohd) and his son and prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (@HamdanMohammed).
To her surprise, the prince had a conversation with her through his verified handle. The young woman, who was overwhelmed by the prince taking an interest in having twitter conversations with her, was also invited to lunch with the royal family in Dubai through Twitter. Thinking of it as a global opportunity, Kavitha immediately agreed. “But there was a catch. The prince told her that she needed a royal card to enter the palace for which she had to pay Rs 5 lakh,” a police officer said. While the prince asked her to pay the money through Western Union, the woman insisted that she could make the payment directly from her bank account and did so. “After that, there was no response from the prince despite Kavitha’s repeated messages to him,” the officer added.
Not one to relent, the woman travelled all the way to Dubai to directly enquire about the royal lunch. But the country’s police did not allow her to interact with the royal family and instead gave her the shocking news that she had been duped by a fraudster like so many other women from across the world.
Kavitha later complained to the Indian embassy in Dubai as directed by the police and there too she came to know that there were many before her to have been hoodwinked. As per their advice, the woman has lodged a complaint about the cheating with the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of the city police. To support her claim, the woman has even submitted her conversation with the prince on his verified Twitter handle.
When Kavitha posted the screenshots of her conversation on Instagram, she received messages from 62 women, including one from Germany, talking of similar experiences. CCB officials said that the prince’s account could have been hacked and the messages could have been sent by hackers.
Who is the Dubai prince?
A quick glance at Dubai prince Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum’s photograph is testimony enough as to why the young Chennai woman was ready to shell out as big an amount as Rs 5 lakh and drop everything and fly off to Dubai to have lunch with the royal family. The handsome prince is also a poet and popularly known as Fazza. He is hugely popular with over 7 million followers on Instagram and he occasionally posts pictures of his hobbies, which include animals, poetry, sports, photography and adventures.