Fake cop robs expat in Saudi Arabia

Balad in downtown Jeddah, which is the hub of retail marketing, has become the haunt of fraudsters who swindle salesmen by impersonating policemen.
In the latest incident, Jeddah police arrested a Saudi who robbed an Asian expatriate of SR100,000 by pretending to be a policeman.
“Balad police received a complaint from an Asian expatriate saying that someone in the guise of a security officer had seized his iqama, and driven him to a deserted place where he robbed him of SR100,000 and three smartphones worth SR6,000,” Jeddah police spokesman Aati Al-Qurashi said in a statement on Friday.
He added that the police embarked on a hunt for the culprit immediately after receiving the complaint and nabbed him within six hours of committing the crime. The culprit is a 20-year-old Saudi citizen and the police are probing the case.
Similar cases in the Balad area have been reported earlier where Saudi citizens and sometimes Yemeni nationals impersonate police and rob expatriates of their possessions. Most of the victims are Bangladeshi or Indian nationals operating small kiosks in the market area. The Riyadh region has also reported similar cases with the police making several arrests in recent months.