Three people arrested by the ISF for their involvement in the fraud ring, in a picture published on Sept. 1 by the ISF (Credit: NNA)
BEIRUT — In a statement issued on Friday, the Internal Security Forces (ISF) announced the arrest of three members of an "international network" accused of swindling Lebanese expatriates into believing they were sending money to their relatives in Lebanon.
According to the police, the three suspects managed to take "large sums of dollars" from Lebanese expatriates abroad, promising to transfer them to their relatives in Lebanon free of charge.
The amounts extorted varied between $30,000 and $100,000 for each transaction.
Once the money had been received, accomplices in Lebanon were responsible for delivering counterfeit bills to the beneficiaries, making them believe they were real bills and counting them using a machine "rigged" so as not to detect the fraud.
The ISF arrested two members of this network on Aug. 14 and 16 in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The first confessed to collecting the counterfeit bills from one of his accomplices in this suburb and handing them over to the victims, in coordination with a woman. The second person arrested confessed that he was in charge of transporting and receiving money from abroad via an illegal money transfer office in the Salim Salam area of Beirut.
The manager of this office was arrested by security services on Aug. 18, according to the ISF.
Investigations are continuing with the aim of apprehending the rest of those involved, according to the same source.