A 36-year-old repeat offender in Baku has been sentenced to eight years in prison after a court found him guilty of a series of elaborate romance scams targeting affluent women. The man, identified as Khayyam, had only been released in 2021 after serving time for similar crimes before resuming his fraudulent schemes.
According to the investigation, Khayyam posed as a wealthy businessman from an influential family, claiming his father held a senior position at the Ministry of Emergency Situations and his mother ran a city hospital. Building romantic relationships with his victims, he used their trust to gain access to money, property, and luxury vehicles.
His first known victim, Laman, saw her car pawned for a 6,000-manat loan and her tablet, worth 1,700 manats, taken. Another woman, Aliya, was convinced to sell her Lexus LX-570 for 60,000 manats and give him an additional 17,000 manats under the pretext of buying a Porsche. He vanished with the funds.
The same pattern repeated with Leyla, whose Mercedes was sold for $27,000, and Aytan, a sales director in a construction firm. Pretending to help her purchase an apartment through the state housing program MIDA, Khayyam persuaded her to hand over 20,000 manats before disappearing.
After his final scam, Khayyam fled to Turkey for about a year but was arrested upon returning to Azerbaijan following multiple complaints. Despite denying his guilt in court, the evidence convinced the judge to impose an eight-year prison sentence.
