A company that owns multiple Italian restaurants in Lebanon filed a complaint to the Public Prosecution Office of Appeal in Beirut, following a shady pizza delivery.
The company stated in its complaint that on February 19th, one of its restaurants received a phone call from “Dr. Mohammad K.,” ordering LBP 189,000’s worth of pizza to his clinic in Corniche El-Mazraa, Beirut, El-Iktisad reported.
When the delivery worker reached the specified address, he was met by a person who identified himself as the building’s concierge and who proceeded to receive the delivery before asking the worker to make a phone call.
He asked the worker to call the doctor in order to meet him at Makassed Hospital and receive payment there. However, when the worker reached the hospital, he was surprised to find that there was no “Dr. Mohammad K.” there at all.
The delivery worker then called the number that had placed the order and found it to be unreachable.
The next day, the worker headed to the same building but couldn’t find the man that had asked him to go to the hospital the previous day; the concierge he met this time was not the same person.
To add to that, he came to realize that the clinic in the building was closed and that it belonged to a doctor with a different name than “Mohammad K.”
By tracking the initial call to the restaurant, security forces were able to identify the users of the phone as Saad A. and Wissam H., who had previously used the number for various scam and fraud operations.
Upon his detention and interrogation, Saad A. claimed that he had not participated in the fraud against the company and that the number belonged to Wissam H.
On his part, the latter denied being involved in fraud operations, claiming that he worked for Saad A. and that he had not paid for the order thinking that the latter would pay instead.
In their indictment, Beirut Investigating Judge Wael Sadiq found that the two defendants had jointly, using fraudulent maneuvers, induced the plaintiff company to deliver a food order and seize it without paying for it, and he referred them to trial.
