Property scams in Dubai: how they work, and the checks that stop them

We are a Dubai brokerage, and several of these scams use the name of a broker. Oston Real Estate is the brand of OPI Real Estate L.L.C.: check us the way this page tells you to check anyone, on the DLD’s list of licensed brokers, office registration number (ORN) 62268. Every rule and check on this page comes from the authority that runs it, except where we say that law firms report it, and every case from a dated report; we read them on 5 and 6 October 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.

The short version

• The Dubai Land Department (DLD) keeps the register that decides who owns a property, and anyone can check it, on dubailand.gov.ae and in its Dubai REST app, from abroad too: a title deed and its owner, blocks and restraints, a broker’s licence, an off-plan project and its escrow account. None of these checks lists a fee.
• A listing, a viewing and a title deed you are shown prove nothing. Every advert needs a permit with a Madmoun QR code that opens on the DLD’s website, the broker must be on the DLD’s list, and the deed must pass the DLD’s check with the owner’s name. In a 2023 case, buyers viewed the units and saw ownership papers before paying men suspected of selling units they did not own.
• Pay only inside the registered process: for a finished property, at the registration trustee, to the owner named on the deed and, if the seller still has a mortgage, to the bank for what it is owed; off-plan, only into the project’s escrow account, whose bank and number the DLD shows for every project. Account details that change by email or WhatsApp are the warning sign.
• The largest losses in these cases were “investments”, not purchases: money for a fixed return or for help with a Golden Visa, with no unit registered in the buyer’s name. If nothing will be registered in your name, it is not a property purchase, and the escrow and register protections do not apply.
• If you own a property and live abroad, word a power of attorney only for the transaction, give it an end date, let it and the contract say who may receive the money, and cancel it when the job is done.
• If it has happened, call your bank at once, report it to the police, keep every message, and see a lawyer licensed in Dubai early: claims have deadlines, such as three years for compensation for a harmful act.

The register decides, and anyone can check it

Dubai’s 2006 registration law gives the DLD’s property register “absolute evidentiary value against all parties”: what it records counts as proof against everyone, and can be challenged only if it is “proven to be the result of fraud or forgery”. A sale has no effect until it is recorded there, and the sale of an off-plan unit that is not entered in the DLD’s interim register, its register of off-plan sales, is void. What decides who owns a property is not a paper anyone shows you, but the register.

How common is fraud? No authority publishes a count of property fraud in Dubai. The DLD publishes how it polices adverts: by April 2025 its AI-based platform had monitored more than 279,000 adverts on Property Finder, Dubizzle and Bayut, and in the six months to July 2024 it fined 256 brokers over theirs. The cases on this page are ones reported from the UAE’s courts and Dubai Police, from 2019 to 2026.

The DLD lets anyone look. Its checks are on dubailand.gov.ae and in Dubai REST, open to every residency status, and none of their pages lists a fee:

How to verify a title deed

A deed check confirms the deed, not that the person in front of you owns it. That is checked at the registration trustee, as the next sections explain.

Fake listings, and brokers who are not brokers

How it works. A flat is offered on social media well below the market, by someone who presents himself as the owner or as a broker. In January 2023, Dubai Police arrested two men suspected of selling units in Dubai that they did not own: 13 reports, about AED 2 million in all, from buyers who had answered social media posts offering units far below the market price. The police said the low prices had made the buyers so eager that they did not check the papers they were shown. In a ruling reported in April 2026, Dubai’s civil court of first instance ordered a man to repay AED 1,073,500 to a compatriot living in their home country. He had offered to buy a flat in Dubai for him, had the money handed to an associate there, and held no licence to work as a broker; the evidence was their WhatsApp messages. Paying someone at home to buy for you in Dubai skips every check on this page.

The checks.

• The advert. Every property advert in Dubai needs an advertising permit, issued by RERA through its Trakheesi system, and a QR code from the DLD’s Madmoun system, introduced in April 2023 and now required “on all real estate advertisements, whether visual or written”. Scan it with your phone’s camera: the permit should open on dubailand.gov.ae, with the company, the advert’s status, the property’s details and its value. When it inspects adverts, the DLD checks that the permit is valid and was “issued to the same advertising company”, and it asks buyers to deal only with adverts that carry the code. In December 2023 it put each violation of the QR code rule at AED 50,000.
• The broker. Search the DLD’s list of licensed brokers by name, office, mobile number or the office registration number (ORN), and check the broker’s card number in Dubai REST’s e-card verification. The broker you deal with should work for the brokerage named on the advert’s permit.

For an off-plan purchase, the same checks in five minutes are in Fake brokers, fake adverts, the wrong account.

Sellers who do not own the property

How it works. The flat exists, you may even view it, and the “seller” shows you a title deed. In the 2023 case, the victims had viewed the units and been shown ownership documents before they paid. In January 2026, Dubai Police’s Anti-Fraud Centre warned that scammers now forge official documents with artificial intelligence. The signs it listed are inconsistent details, wording that does not match the official template, and fake signatures or stamps; it advises confirming any reference number through a trusted source.

The checks.

• The deed and the property: the title deed check with the owner’s name, and the Property Status Enquiry, as above.
• The person. At the registration trustee, the DLD-licensed office where a finished property’s sale is registered, the seller and the buyer identify themselves with an Emirates ID or, if they do not live in the UAE, a valid passport. Before you pay anything, compare the owner’s name on the deed with the seller’s passport.
• The deposit. You sign with the seller on the DLD’s standard contract, Form F, which brokers call the MOU. It records the deposit, around 10% of the price is common, and should say who holds it until completion and when it may be released. Pay it only as Form F says, and never before you have signed it.
• The price. If you are asked to send the price, or most of it, to another account before the transfer, stop. The sale is registered at the trustee, between the seller and the buyer “or their legally authorized representatives”, and the price is paid there. When the seller still owes a bank or the developer, the DLD’s procedure for selling a mortgaged property splits it into manager’s cheques, cheques issued and guaranteed by a UAE bank: one in the name of the bank or the developer for what is owed, as its liability letter states; one in the seller’s name for the rest; and one to the DLD for its 4%. Ask to see the liability letter, in which the bank states what is still owed, before you sign Form F.
• If the seller is represented, Dubai law firms report that a DLD circular of July 2025 has the price paid to the owner named on the title deed: by manager’s cheque in the owner’s name, says one, or to the representative against a receipt stating that it was received on the owner’s behalf. The other reports that practice has relaxed again where both the sale contract and the power of attorney say so.

Buying from abroad, someone signs for you on a power of attorney: see the guides for buyers from Germany, from the UK, from Ireland, from the Netherlands and as a US citizen.

Off-plan: unregistered projects, and money outside escrow

How it works. A project is sold before it is registered, or the money is collected outside the project’s escrow account: by a broker, by a company no one licensed, or as a payment before the launch. In June 2024 the DLD fined three developers AED 500,000 each for marketing off-plan projects without completing the registration. The director of its Real Estate Control Department told investors to check in Dubai REST that an off-plan project is licensed and registered with an escrow account, and not to make any payment outside the project’s escrow account.

The checks.

• The project and the developer. Search the project’s name in the DLD’s Project Status Enquiry: it shows its completion, its developer and its status, and it should not be “under cancellation”. Check the developer on the DLD’s list of approved developers. A developer may not advertise an off-plan project, or show it at an exhibition, without the DLD’s written authorisation.
• The escrow account, before you pay anything. Your instalments go into an account opened “in the name of the Real Estate Development project” with a bank the DLD has accredited. In the Project Status Enquiry, open the project and choose Escrow Account: it shows the bank and the account number. Compare both with your booking form and your sale and purchase agreement before every transfer, and check the bank on the DLD’s list of approved escrow trustees.
• Before the launch. A developer who wants to sell off-plan must first apply to the DLD to open the project’s escrow account, and the DLD says a new project may be launched or announced only “After completing all registration procedures and obtaining the accreditation certificate”. A payment before that, often called an expression of interest, may have no escrow account to go into.
• Never to the broker. A broker who markets a developer’s project “must deposit the sale price … into the project Escrow Account” and “may not deposit the price into his own account”; any agreement to the contrary is void.
• The registration. The developer must register your purchase within 90 days of signing, and the DLD then emails the provisional registration certificate, the document developers call “the Oqood”, to you, the buyer. Give the developer your own email address. If 90 days pass without it, ask the developer. If it refuses or delays, the DLD says an application to register the contract can be made to its Real Estate Registration Assurance section, with your documents. Take advice before you stop paying: stopping payment can let the developer keep part of what you paid.

The escrow law punishes anyone who knowingly offers units in a fraudulent development project for sale, or misappropriates money handed over to build a project, with jail and a fine of at least AED 100,000, or either. What escrow protects and what it does not, and what happens when a project is cancelled, are in Where your money goes.

Payments that go to the wrong account

How it works. Someone takes over an email account, or copies one: a broker’s, a developer’s, a bank’s. Then new payment details arrive. In a case reported in Abu Dhabi in October 2026, a tenant paid AED 168,700 after emails that appeared to come from a bank employee. The court linked them to a hack of the letting company’s email; two men were convicted in their absence, sentenced to a year in prison and deportation, and ordered to repay what reached their accounts. In Dubai, the police warn of cloned websites and advise checking the beneficiary’s details before transferring any money, and the DLD asks to be told about fake emails, SMS and WhatsApp messages, and fake payment requests, in its name.

The checks.

• Bank details do not change by email or WhatsApp. If they seem to, call the sender on a number you already have, not one given in the message, before you pay.
• Off-plan, the right account is the one the DLD shows for the project. For a finished property, the price is paid at the trustee.
• No authority asks for your passwords or verification codes by phone or text message, Dubai Police says. That includes your login to UAE Pass, the UAE’s digital ID, which you may set up to have documents attested from abroad.

“Investments” with fixed returns, and the Golden Visa as bait

How it works. No unit is bought. The money goes to a person or a company that promises a fixed return, or help with a residence visa. In a case reported in November 2025, a Dubai court ordered the owner of a brokerage firm to repay more than AED 4 million, with interest, to two investors who had paid him under two “investment agreements” promising a fixed annual return, once the payments had stopped. In a case reported in September 2026, a Dubai civil court ordered two men to pay AED 4.65 million to a man who had handed them AED 4.35 million in cash, after they promised him a property investment with high returns and help getting a Golden Visa; a criminal court had already sentenced both to a year in prison. Dubai Police’s warning on investment schemes fits both cases: legitimate platforms “do not guarantee fixed or risk-free returns”.

The checks.

• A property purchase is a registered contract for a unit: for a finished property, Form F and the transfer at the trustee; for an off-plan one, a sale and purchase agreement registered in the DLD’s interim register. A contract that pays you a return without a unit registered in your name is not a property purchase, and the escrow and register protections do not apply to it.
• The Golden Visa through property rests on property registered in your name, and its fees are official ones: see what counts towards AED 2 million and how you apply, and what it costs. Be wary of anyone who ties help with the visa to an investment that is not a registered purchase.
• Pay by bank transfer, not in cash. A transfer leaves a record and can sometimes be stopped; cash cannot. A broker must also report a freehold sale or purchase that involves cash of AED 55,000 or more, in one payment or several: see The AED 55,000 cash rule.
• A rental guarantee is a separate promise from the company that gives it, outside escrow and outside the DLD’s protections, even when the unit itself is registered: see Guaranteed rental returns.
• Property tokens. In April 2025 the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) warned of firms falsely claiming to take part in the DLD’s tokenisation pilot: “No entities beyond those explicitly approved by DLD and VARA are authorised to participate in the pilot phase.” Check any such firm on VARA’s public register.

If you own a property and live abroad

How it works. A power of attorney allows more than it should, or one is forged. In a 2019 trial, prosecutors said a villa valued at AED 17 million to AED 25 million had been sold for half its value while its owner was travelling, using a forged power of attorney and a forged passport; the one he had actually given covered only following up the redecoration work. Three men were charged with forgery, and the two in court denied the charges. The other risk is the property itself. In a ruling reported in March 2026, a Dubai court evicted a man who had occupied an owner’s flat since 2013 without his knowledge, under a one-year lease the owner had never signed, and ordered him to pay AED 857,500.

The checks.

• Word it for the transaction. Dubai law firms reading the July 2025 circular say general wording such as “full authority to manage property” is not enough; one adds that a power of attorney may not be used to change the owner’s details on the title deed unless it expressly says so.
• Give it an end date. One of these firms notes that a power of attorney made in the UAE is “generally valid indefinitely, unless they are expressly limited in terms of time”.
• Say who receives the money, in both the contract and the power of attorney.
• Cancel it when the job is done. The DLD notarises the cancellation of a power of attorney you issued, “in order to prevent the authorized attorney from acting” under it. It is free and takes about 20 minutes, but it is done in person at the DLD’s main building, with a copy of your and your attorney’s identity documents. If you cannot come to Dubai, ask a lawyer there how to revoke it from abroad, and tell the attorney in writing.
• If you let the property, do it through a written agreement with a company licensed in Dubai, and look at the Property Status Enquiry from time to time: it lists active rental disputes on the property.

Claims you will meet, checked

• “How Dubai eliminated real estate fraud.” The cases on this page come from the UAE’s courts and Dubai Police, from 2019 to 2026. The checks are strong when they are used; the scams work by getting around them.
• “An escrow account, which is a special bank account where buyers’ payments are held and managed by the DLD.” It is a bank account, but the bank manages it: by law the escrow agent is “the financial or banking institution accredited by the Department to manage an Escrow Account”. RERA approves those banks and audits the accounts.
• “Hundreds of real estate fraud complaints” in 2025. We found no official count of property fraud cases in Dubai: the DLD publishes figures on adverts and fines, not on fraud. The page that makes this claim describes its own “real cases” as composites.
• Escrow keeps your money until you get the keys. The escrow bank pays it out as construction stages are completed, after its engineer has checked the site, and under conditions a developer can draw on it earlier. If a project is cancelled, you are owed everything you paid, but what you receive depends on what is left in the account. See Where your money goes and When a project is cancelled, or stops.

If it has already happened

Today

1. Call your bank, and the exchange house if you used one, and ask them to stop or recall the transfer. In the 2023 case, the transfers were halted at the exchange houses used to send them, and the money was recovered.
2. Stop paying, and keep everything: the messages, the advert, receipts, transfer confirmations, names and numbers. The DLD asks you not to delete suspicious messages until it confirms its investigation is complete.

This week

3. Report it to the police. The UAE government’s portal directs fraud and scams to the local police, and cyber-enabled scams to Dubai Police’s eCrime platform. In the UAE, 999 is for crimes and emergencies, and Dubai Police takes non-emergency reports on 901. If you are abroad, report it to your own police as well, especially if money changed hands there, and ask a lawyer in Dubai how to file and follow the case from abroad. Fraud over the internet is punished with at least a year in prison and/or a fine of AED 250,000 to AED 1 million; forging a government’s electronic document, with temporary imprisonment, which UAE law sets at three to fifteen years, and a fine of AED 150,000 to AED 750,000.
4. Tell the DLD about fake messages, adverts or payment requests in its name: by email to customerservices@dubailand.gov.ae, the address on its cyber security page, with screenshots, the date and time, and a short description. A violation by a broker or company licensed in Dubai, including cold calls, goes to its Complaint Against a Real Estate Company service, which acts within five business days. That service does not handle refunds or contractual disputes, which belong to the courts, nor contracts concluded more than six months ago.
5. Be wary of anyone who offers to recover the money for a fee paid in advance.

Then

6. Claim the money back. If there is a criminal case, you can join your claim for compensation to it while the case is being investigated or tried; or you bring a civil case. In three of the cases on this page, Dubai’s civil courts ordered the money repaid with interest of 5% a year. Claims have deadlines. A claim for compensation for a harmful act must be brought within three years of learning of the loss and of who caused it; if a criminal case about it has not ended when those three years run out, the period starts only when it ends, and fifteen years after the act it is too late in any case. Claims under a contract, or for repayment, can follow other periods, so see a lawyer licensed in Dubai early.
7. If a project stopped or was cancelled, that is not fraud in itself. Claims about a project whose construction has been suspended, or that has been cancelled, go to the Special Tribunal for Unfinished and Cancelled Real Property Projects, which sits at the DLD: they pay no court fees, and its decisions are final, without ordinary appeal. See When a project is cancelled, or stops.

Before you pay: eight checks

Questions and answers

Related guides

• What can go wrong when you buy off-plan in Dubai
• What a guaranteed return is actually worth
• Proving where your money came from
• Getting a Golden Visa through Dubai property
• What buying property in Dubai costs on top of the price
• Dubai property terms, explained
• Buying property in Dubai from Germany
• Buying property in Dubai from the UK
• Buying property in Dubai from Ireland
• Buying property in Dubai from the Netherlands
• Buying property in Dubai as a US citizen