UAE Flight Attendant Facing Jail Time Because Of $100k Crypto Loan

One foreign resident of Abu Dhabi is in the latest cryptocurrencies news for facing jail time. The UAE flight attendant got a $100,000 loan in 2017 on cryptocurrency investments, which later tanked and he can no longer afford the payments.

As detailed reports show, the UAE flight attendant was working for Etihad Airlines. He says that he faces up to three years in prison in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) now because of his inability to make installments on a $100,000 loan he took out to invest in crypto around the all-time highs.

The Reddit user Crypthomie identified himself as a former UAE flight attendant and a non-UAE citizen. He posted an image to the Bitcoin subreddit on June 9 and said that his repayment schedule is for a 338,000 Dirhan loan – which is around $109,000 at the time – with the Emirates Islamic Bank.

As Crypthomie noted, he has lost his job with Etihad because of the pandemic and can no longer afford to pay the monthly installments of roughly $2230 on the cryptocurrency investments he made since 2017. However, he is still required to repay the bank 393,296.80 Dirham (around $127,000 now) by the end of 2021.

The story behind Crypthomie went semi-viral in the community in August 2018 after the UAE flight attendant posted the same bank installment schedule image and revealed his tales. Taking out the loan in December 2017, he was prepared to make new gains on the all-time high of $20,000 for Bitcoin.

Less than a year later, however, he reported a 85% loss on his digital investments. The redditor claimed that he had purchased NEO (NEO), Stellar (XLM), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH) and “some shitcoins which lost 95% of their value.” He said:

“It was my first speculative investment. I think it’s an age where we’re still unconscious and take a lot of risk if we don’t have big responsibilities like a kid or bills to pay.”

Neither the Ethereum news nor the Stellar news helped this UAE flight attendant to see green and repay his loan. What is also important to note is that unlike many other countries, the UAE treats debt as a criminal matter rather than a civil one. This means that if someone is unable to make his required monthly payments, they can be sentenced up to three years in jail and possibly longer if the loan stays unpaid.

“We’ll be sent to jail within a few months,” he said and referred to his former partner who has an unrelated debt, “and [the worst part] is that we won’t be able to communicate.”