A woman lured an engineer to a hotel apartment then tied him up, assaulted him and threatened him with a hot iron before stealing his money and credit card, heard Dubai Criminal Court.
Prosecutors said the Nigerian defendant, 35, advertised massage offers on WhatsApp to lure men to the apartment in Al Barsha.
The alleged victim, an Egyptian technology engineer, said the woman contacted him on August 21 to offer him a massage.
"I responded and asked for a location map, I arrived at a hotel apartments in Al Barsha area and when I got to the place I noticed it was an apartment and not a massage centre, it had no equipment,' said the 34-year-old man.
He said the defendant immediately appeared and shut the door after which four men appeared and restrained him.
"They tied me up and stripped me naked before they assaulted me all together and demanded that I hand them all the cash I have," the man told the court.
"They kept on beating me up for about two hours, then they put a hot iron next to my face and said they would kill me if I didn't give them my cash, bank cards and their pin codes, which I did," he said.
Prosecutors said the victim was locked in the apartment while one of the men left and withdrew Dh15,000 from the engineer's bank account. He then went to Sharjah and used the victim's credit card to buy Dh163,000 worth of gold, records show.
The man was allegedly locked in the apartment for 14 hours before being released at 4pm the following day.
"They told me to take a shower and get dressed so they let me go, when I got out of the shower I found out that they all have fled, so I called the police immediately who came and met me at the apartment," said the victim.
A police officer said they arrested the woman a few days later but the four men are at large.
During police questioning the woman denied having any part in the incident, saying she arrived to the country five days before.
"The victim identified her three times and then we found the WhatsApp account on her phone and saw she had been sharing the apartment's location with a number of people," said the police lieutenant.
In court on Wednesday, the defendant denied charges of theft, confinement and issuing death threats.
Her verdict will be issued on November 29.