A document clearing agent, who was convicted in three separate cases of forging Electricity and Water Authority (EWA) receipts to fool customers, has appealed one of the verdicts issued against him.
Supreme Criminal Appeals Court judges will issue a ruling in the case of the 22-year-old Syrian at the end of the month, in the second criminal case he was found guilty in.
Last month, he successfully appealed the first case’s ruling, and his three-year jail term was lowered to one year, and judges also overturned his deportation order due to safety concerns about being sent back to Syria.
In this case, he earlier admitted to forging an EWA receipt to trick a customer into thinking her electric connection security deposit was paid, and taking the money for himself.
The High Criminal Court convicted him of maliciously altering a genuine document, and also ruled to imprison him for three years, with a BD1,000 fine and an order to deport him after the sentence is served.
It is not known if the March appeals ruling to overturn the deportation will apply to all three of his cases, or if appeals judges will have to individually dismiss it in all cases in order for him to stay in Bahrain.
The GDN earlier reported that in the second case, the fraud was discovered when the customer called EWA, asking why her building in Sanabis had not yet received a connection to the electricity grid.
It appeared that the BD300 deposit had not been paid, and the customer sent EWA a receipt purportedly provided on its website, which was later revealed to be a forgery by the appellant.
Upon questioning at the Cybercrimes Prosecution, the young Syrian admitted to everything, and described the sequence of events.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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