BD21,000 stolen by fake bank staff
A court has now upheld prison sentences for two of the 21 members of the criminal network, some of whom were also found guilty of possessing pornographic material.
The High Criminal Court of Appeal refused to overturn the one-year jail terms of two defendants, leaving them to serve their sentences along with the rest of the gang.
The first to eighth defendants were each sentenced to five years behind bars and fined BD5,000.
Jail time
The ninth and tenth received three years, while the eleventh to twenty-first were handed one-year terms.
On top of that, the seventh to ninth, eleventh to fifteenth, and eighteenth were fined BD100 each for having pornographic material.
The court ruled that all of them would be deported once they had served their time.
Investigators found that the scam was run by a group of Asian nationals who had banded together to strip money from unsuspecting victims.
Masquerading as bank employees, they called people claiming their account details needed updating or falsely telling them they had won cash prizes.
Once they had the details, they drained funds from the victims' accounts.
Authorities were tipped off when reports started flooding into the Anti-Cybercrime Directorate at the General Directorate of Anti-Corruption, Economic, and Electronic Security.
Investigators traced the stolen money, leading them straight to the culprits.
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