Two suspects detained in latest 'black dollar' scam

AMMAN — Police on Wednesday announced the arrest of two suspects accused of defrauding several Jordanians of undisclosed amounts of cash in what is known as a “black dollar” scam.

Preventive Security Department agents arrested the two men, who are citizens of an unidentified African country, on Tuesday at a furnished apartment, Public Security Department Spokesperson Major Amer Sartawi said.

“We received several complaints from citizens about the two men, who have been in town for a while… we monitored the apartment and raided it without any major incident,” Sartawi told The Jordan Times.

He said investigators found papers cut in the size of Jordanian and US currency notes, computers, printers, ink and some chemical substances in the apartment.

Over the past decade, several suspects have been arrested in Jordan in connection with what the authorities have dubbed the “black dollar” scam.

The suspects pose as representatives of rich individuals in countries that are plagued by conflict, according to Sartawi.

“The men claim that these rich individuals want to smuggle cash outside their countries and dye the currency notes black,” the police official explained.

The suspects would trick their victims by collecting large amounts of money “to buy expensive chemicals that would return the currency to its original condition, promising to give them some of the smuggled cash”, Sartawi said, adding that once the fraudsters received the money they would disappear.

The operation entails showing the victim a black currency note, usually a “black dollar”, which would then be placed in a special chemical substance and transformed into a clean currency note, according to officials who were involved in past arrests suspects in similar scams.

The suspects usually use “visual tricks”, such as substituting a black dollar with a real dollar covered in black paint, to convince their victims that the substance actually works.

Sartawi urged the public to be careful when dealing with people who “promise easy profits”.

“The black dollar scam has been going on in the Kingdom for over 10 years and many citizens fall victim to this kind of fraud; we hope that people will avoid such suspicious transactions,” he said.