Con artists prey on UK Muslims ahead of hajj.
As Muslims across the world prepare for the upcoming hajj season, con artists in the United Kingdom are preying on the faithful and scamming them out of thousands of pounds with hajj packages that either fail to deliver or turn out to be completely fake.
With nothing but a stack of leaflets dropped off at local mosques, con artists lure people who want to perform the annual pilgrimage with offers of deals including a visa to Saudi Arabia, internal flight to Mecca, accommodation and other amenities needed.
….A recent scam includes a group of 70 pilgrims, who were charged £2,350 (nearly $4,000) per person, arriving to Saudi to find the internal flight to Mecca they paid for was bogus forcing them to pay for a coach to the holy city.
Upon arriving to Mecca the group found they had no accommodation and were forced to sleep in a kitchen of one of the make-shift tents.
“People are being taken for a ride because if you have never been to hajj before you are hoping for the journey of a lifetime and expect people to be sincere and honest,” Aziz said, adding the association is lobbying the British government to help bring the con artists to justice.
