Cypriot-Australian arrested after posing as Saudi prince

A CYPRIOT-born Australian entrepreneur, who claimed to be a wealthy member of the Saudi Arabian royal family, has been arrested in Malaysia after being charged with cheating Canadian businessman out of $1.5 million.

Omar Yusuf, 38, posed as an oil merchant named ‘Prince Omar’, a supposed friend of the King of Malaysia. His victim was Vahid Yaghoubi, a Canadian citizen with Afghan origin, chief executive officer of Oliver Petroleum Ltd., who paid $1.5 million to the account of CNT Yusuf Sdn Ghd, Yusuf’s trading company.

The offence, committed between the end of 2005 and May 16 2006, involved Yusuf leading Yaghboubi into believing that he had 100,000 tonnes of Mazut M100 oil for sale at the price of $250 a tonne.
Yusuf is wanted for similar scams in Hong Kong and Australia. The self-styled royal in actuality started off as a taxi truck driver-owner in Australia in 2001, when he borrowed $1,248 from Transmet to establish his company On The Go Transport. Though he repaid the loan in 24 $50 instalments, the registration of Yusuf’s four-tonne delivery vehicle was suspended, citing safety hazards.

In 2004, Yusuf’s website Yusufholdings.com stated that On The Go Transport had a fleet of 265 trucks, suggesting that he had received from investors a sum of $9.45 million. A year later, Yusuf’s fleet was revealed to include only 30 trucks. He disappeared from Melbourne in 2005, promising but failing to return within sixty days to repay 80 investors who had contributed $250,000 to a fleet business that did not exist.

By Christmas 2005, Yusuf had resurfaced in Malaysia.
Yusuf once had an office at 101 Collins Street in Melbourne, where he claimed to own an empire of over 200 businesses, including drug companies, oil refineries and fashion houses.
The court has granted Yusuf a bail of 500,000 ringgit ($136,240), which has yet to be posted at time of printing. He has been ordered to hand over both his Australian passport and his Liberian passport, with it still being unclear as to why he has the latter.
The court has set March 19, 2007 as the date of his trial.

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