Dubai: A babysitter has been accused of stealing her sponsor’s chequebook and using 11 cheques from it to pay for her rent, a court heard on Sunday.
The Indian housewife was said to have hired a 45-year-old babysitter to babysit her children before she absconded from work after nearly seven months.
According to records, the sponsor, an Indian housewife, received a phone call from a realty company sometime in October alerting her that the Filipina babysitter had given them 11 cheques. The sponsor realised subsequently that her chequebook had been stolen from her residence and reported the matter to the police.
Police apprehended the 45-year-old Filipina shortly after that.
Prosecutors accused the suspect of stealing the chequebook, cooperating with another female suspect in forging the sponsor’s signature and issuing 11 cheques worth Dh40,000.
The suspect pleaded guilty and admitted to the forgery and using the cheques when she appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Sunday but denied being the one who signed on the cheques. “I did not forge the signature, it was my flatmate,” she contended before the presiding judge in courtroom seven.
The sponsor told prosecutors that the incident happened after the babysitter absconded from her residence. “An Egyptian realty manager phoned me to tell me that the suspect had paid them her rent using my cheques. The manager told me that she had given them 11 cheques with my name and signature … it was then when I realised that my chequebook had been stolen. I reported it to the police,” she testified.
The Egyptian witness testified to prosecutors that Filipina suspect had paid them using the stolen cheques for a flat that she had rented in Al Mutainah.
“She rented the flat from August 2017 for eight months … and she gave us 11 security cheques worth Dh40,000 against that period. She told me that her friend had given her those cheques, which were all signed and filled. When she failed to pay her rent, we used one of those cheques but the bank informed us that the signature was different. Thereafter, we communicated with the housewife and told her what had happened,” he told prosecutors.
A ruling will be heard on February 11.
