JEDDAH: A court here has sentenced an expatriate to one year in jail and a SR1,000 fine for impersonating a citizen so that he could find a job, a local publication reported recently.

A court source quoted by the publication said that the man had applied for government and private sector jobs. “The odd thing is that the photograph on the identity card resembles the defendant. No one would have noticed the difference,” the source said.

During the court hearing, the defendant told the presiding judge that he had found the card lying in a street. When he saw that he resembled the citizen, he decided to keep it so that he could apply for jobs.

However, his fraud came to an end after a security patrol found him unconscious in a local neighborhood and took him to a hospital. When he regained consciousness he was questioned by a security officer and asked to produce his identity card, the source said.

The security officer was suspicious, and inspecting the card closely saw that the photograph was not of the man in the hospital. After making sure that the man was healthy, he was taken to a local police station where he was charged with fraud, the source said.