When in October 2004 unemployed Lebanese architect Samir read an advertisement in Lebanon’s al-Diyar newspaper touting positions in Dubai for architects, engineers and foremen, he called the Beirut number in the box for more information. He wasn’t hopeful. He’d been unemployed for over a year and had responded unsuccessfully to dozens of ads. But this time, the recruitment office he was directed to gave him a glimmer of hope. Consulting & Investment was located on the 7th floor of Block B in the smart Sodeco Square building. It was lavishly furnished and manned by brisk, energetic and well-dressed staff. The company oozed professionalism. Samir knew he was qualified and believed that his luck might be changing.
It got better. The owner of the agency, Hadi M, a tall, suave, man in his late 30s wearing a designer suit and whose long, black hair was drawn back in an elegant ponytail, told Samir that he was the representative of Dubai’s al-Maktoum family and their extensive business interests. He looked at Samir’s CV and then declared in excellent English that Samir’s qualifications were bound to get him a job in the wealthy emirate. “Leave it with me,” he said, getting up from behind the desk to shake Samir’s hand.
Surely enough, 48 hours later Samir received a phone call from Hadi M. saying the job was his. It was an attractive package. “He told me I’d be earning $3,200 a month, living in a nice apartment and getting my laundry done twice a week,” recalls Samir, who was so excited he rushed round to Sodeco Square to sign the agreement. There was just one thing: Samir would have to pay $450 for his airfare to Dubai.
“It’s just a precaution,” he explained casually, “If I pay for the ticket and you decide to disappear once you get to Dubai, I’ll have lost $450.” Hadi M. reassured Samir that his employers would refund him. “Call me in a week. Your visa will be ready then,” he said Hadi M and an upbeat, albeit out-of-pocket, Samir went home.
A week later, Samir called Consulting & Investment, only to be told that there was a delay in getting the visa. Samir was disappointed but still confident that he would soon be off to Dubai. But disappointment soon gave way to doubt and then suspicion, when two weeks later, Hadi M. told him there was a problem. Would he come down to the office to talk about it? When he arrived, the secretary told him Hadi M. was in Syria “sorting out papers,” and that in any case he did not have an appointment. “I knew then that something was wrong,” says Samir.
A few days later Samir called Hadi M. “Your papers are ready,” Hadi M. said. “Come on Friday at eleven.” When Samir arrived at the office that Friday he found four other people waiting in front of Consulting & Investment’s offices. The door was locked. Repeated banging elicited no response. Everyone there had paid Hadi M. for plane tickets to Dubai where they had been offered jobs. They too had experienced delays in their paper work and they too had been told to come down to the office on that day to pick up their documentation. But Hadi M and his brisk staff were nowhere to be seen.
Some were furious. All felt foolish. It was clear then that the whole thing had been a scam. But there was little they could do. The concierge was summoned. They were told that Hadi M. had left together with all his furniture.
Samir and the four people he found waiting in front of Hadi M.’s Sodeco Square door are just a handful of what are dozens, if not hundreds of people who, over the last two years or so, have responded to newspaper ads and then paid Hadi M. hundreds of dollars in advance payments, blinded by the veneer of three separate bogus recruitment consultancies he set up in three different Beirut locations. (He even took $650 from a Lebanese brigadier-general in relation to the arrangement of a job in Dubai for his Philippine maid.) No one ever appears to have secured a job and no one has been refunded in full. Hadi M is apparently still at large.
At least 20 lawsuits have been filed against Hadi M. They show that he has been active since August or September 2003, when he placed ads in al-Diyar, al-Balad and al-Waseet. In the earliest suit, filed on 15 September 2003, a plaintiff states that he went to an office on the ninth floor of the Aresco Building in Hamra, where he paid Hadi M. $700. Another plaintiff was allegedly offered a business position in Dubai at $1,500 a month with insurance and housing. Yet another says he was told he would be a restaurant manager in Dubai at a restaurant owned by the al-Maktoums. Hadi M. then allegedly stalled, closed down his office. Before his Sodeco incarnation, he briefly plied his trade in the BCD, where in May of last year he met Walid, an unemployed personnel manager, who wanted to work in Dubai to be close to his son. Walid had seen an ad and went to the second floor of the Hibat al-Maarad building on Maarad Street. “The office was fantastic,” recalled Walid. “I had never seen such luxurious furniture.”
When, a few days later, Hadi M. told him that he’d landed the job, he agreed to pay $600 for the airfare. But Walid’s delight turned to disillusionment when it became clear that Hadi M. was now avoiding him and that there appeared to be no job waiting for him in Dubai. Then, like at Sodeco, the final insult. “He gave me an appointment but when I got there I saw around 20 people standing in front of a locked door.” Hadi M had disappeared again.
Lawyers and recruitment industry professionals are frustrated by the ease at which people’s hopes and dreams were shattered by this small-time fraudster.
“Hadi M. was dealing with naïve and desperate people from whom he was charging a very small amount of money,” explained Sabbah al-Hajj, head of Management Pro, one of Lebanon’s leading recruitment consultancies, and who claims to have reported Hadi M. to the Ministry of Economy. “If they were to recruit a lawyer, it would cost more than the money they want to recoup. It would also take years. People become defeated. He is counting on people thinking like this.”
The desperation to escape Lebanon’s stiflingly job market is another reason recruitment industry insiders say many people agreed to hand over cash so willingly. Another factor is ignorance. People in the Arab world are used to paying for recruitment services, despite the fact that it is illegal for any company to take money from the applicants.
“Lebanese labor law prohibits the taking of any money from applicants, at any stage, even if he is just filling out an application,” noted Johnny Chamichian, head of JCConseil Recruitment Consultants.
Reputable local agencies style themselves as management consultants to avoid being tarred by the same brush. JCConseil, for example, only charges the company on whose behalf it is recruiting.
Management Pro, however, takes $10 from candidates who wish to fill in an application. Company manager, al-Hajj said the $10 served as a screening process to differentiate between serious and not-so-serious applicants. Asked if this was legal, al-Hajj said: “I have never thought about it. But what I am doing is selling them an application form, not charging them. If you want to take an application form we charge $10. If you want to send a CV we charge nothing. We are completely within the law.”
When Walid took his case to court he learned Hadi M, who was born in Nabatieh in 1966, had told the court that he had had been unable to fulfill his end of the contract because he had been in Roumieh prison for a previous offence and offered to return the money within a few weeks. Walid confirmed that received an initial refund of $200 but has heard nothing since.
Unbeknownst to him, Hadi M. was at it again. This time in Sodeco Square, where apart from Samir, he would also ruin the day of Fadi, a craftsman who had responded to the following 23 September 2004 ad in al-Diyar: “Investment & Consultant Co. has the following open positions for Dubai: Civil engineer; mechanical engineer; architect; forman [sic] Tel/fax 01/423100 – 03056331.”
Hadi M. told Fadi that he was a business representative for the government of Dubai and that Fadi had successfully landed a job with a prominent local company. He could expect a generous salary and a comfortable standard of living. Fadi paid the airfare, waited a few weeks and then turned up to a locked office.
On reflection the deception was obvious, but applicants were blinded. “It’s funny thinking back. No one else in the company revealed their name. It was totally secretive, said one swindled applicant, who added, “The office was big and well-designed. Hadi was projecting the image of royal al-Maktoum representative. But I saw no pictures of al-Maktoum, his family, their work or their buildings.”
Applicants were usually asked for a copy of their passport, two passport photos, and certified copies of any degrees or other qualifications. Sometimes another $100 was required to obtain medical certificates – supposedly required for immigration – although the applicants were not asked to undergo any tests.
Hadi M’s behavior was also sometimes at odds with his professional image. “He drove all the way up to my house in Tripoli, in his 1999 or 2000 BMW 750, to collect the $100 from me in cash without giving me a receipt,” said another applicant. “He said: you can’t expect me to bring a receipt with me all the way up here.”
When he did give them proof of payment, it was often handwritten. “My receipt didn’t look like the receipt that a big company would issue. It was headed in Microsoft Word and written by hand in Arabic. It had no official stamp,” recalled one another of Hadi M’s victims. “After that, I knew something was wrong. Then it occurred to me he never told me his name, never given me a business card and that his computer was never switched on.”
In retrospect the warning signs were numerous and obvious. Victims were bemused by the fact that there was never any official information in the job offer about which company they would be working for or whom they should report to. “I told Hadi you have to give me the name of the company. You can’t just say al-Maktoum. That’s like saying I’ll be working for Hariri, recalled yet another duped applicant. “Doesn’t the company have a website? He said yes: www.al-maktoum.com.”
In May, EXECUTIVE called three mobile numbers, which according to a police investigation belonged to Hadi M. The first was out of service. An elderly woman, perplexed and annoyed by the frequent calls from people trying to track down Hadi M, answered the second. A man who answered the third number saying that Hadi M. was out of the country for a month. Could it have been Hadi M? When EXECUTIVE called the mobile phone of one of his lawyers, she hung up and then turned off her phone.
If the authorities have been aware of Hadi M.’s activities since at least the end of 2003, how has it been is it possible he was able to open a further two recruitment offices over the next two years and fool dozens more people? In the document attached to Fadi’s complaint, the judge orders Hadi M. to be arrested for fraud. It appears that Hadi M. was indeed detained but then released leading to theories from his victims that he has been able to avoid jail and continue his activities because he is “protected” by a major south Lebanon politician. Some say that they were encouraged by the authorities to drop legal proceedings in return for partial reimbursement. “He can do whatever scams he wants,” contended one. “They know what he’s doing but he’s being allowed to do the same thing again and again.”
His victims say it has ultimately nothing to do with money. The damage is more emotional, even though many quit their jobs in Lebanon or missed other opportunities. “I don’t care about the money,” said Walid. “He sold me hope and then dashed it.”