An Unemployed Man Posed as a Judge Until the Wrong Sash Gave Him Away

He sat behind a courtroom desk with stacks of case folders arranged before him, wearing a judicial sash, and filmed himself for the camera. For anyone scrolling past the video online, he looked like exactly what he claimed to be.

His name was Mostafa Kamel, an unemployed Egyptian man. He had bribed three court clerks to get inside a real courthouse, and then he posted the footage on social media. He even appeared on a television chat show, telling the host about growing up poor and working his way up to the judiciary.

The con relied on people trusting the robe, and it worked. Using those videos as proof, Kamel convinced people he could arrange state-subsidized apartments for them in exchange for cash. In all, he collected the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Egyptian pounds, and he paid about $60,000 of it to the three clerks to keep the access and the illusion going.

The scheme held until August, when a buyer who had handed over money for an apartment did not get what Kamel had promised. That man went to the authorities, who arrested Kamel and began checking the video footage he had posted online.

That is when the costume fell apart. Kamel had bragged about owning a firearm, which turned out to be unlicensed. In the videos, the gun was tucked under his belt. A judge would not normally carry one that way, and that was one giveaway. The other was the sash itself. Kamel claimed a post on Egypt's top appeals court, yet the color he wore did not match that court's dress, a mistake that someone who knew the courts would catch.

He has since been sentenced on charges that include impersonating a judge, scamming people, and possessing the unlicensed gun. The bench, the files, and the television interview are now evidence, undone by two small details he got wrong.