Two Indians have been sentenced to 517 years in jail by the Dubai misdemeanours court for duping thousands of investors in a USD200 million fraud case (AED735 million).
The convicts in the case are Sydney Lemos (37) and Ryan de Souza (25) hailing from the Indian State of Goa. Lemos’s wife, who is at large, was also given the same sentence.
The trio had formed a company named Exential through which they introduced a fake scheme as a legitimate foreign currency trading programme and cheated hundreds of people. They lured many victims by offering them 120 per cent annual returns on a minimum investment of USD25,000 (AED91,828)
When the fraud was detected, Department of Economic Development (DED) of Dubai shut down the office in July 2016.
Lemos had been arrested in December 2016 and then let out on bail. He was again nabbed in January 2017, while his wife escaped to Goa. Ryan was also arrested in Dubai in 2017.
Lemos and Ryan had been sent to Dubai Central Prison in Al Awir.
Interestingly, there are other countries whose courts have given sentences exceeding hundred of years.
In the United States of America, a kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro was sentenced to life without parole and 1000 years in 2013.
A Malaysian man was charged with more than 600 sexual assaults against his daughter in August 2017. It was reported that he could face a jail term of over 12,000 years if proven guilty.
US citizen Peter Mallory was given a 1,000-year jail sentence in 2013 after being charged with 60 cases of sexual exploitation of children.
