Three men were yesterday each jailed for two years after being found guilty of defrauding a Maltese man of Lm12,000 and conspiring to commit fraud.

Benjamin Saygbe, 39, from Liberia, Yaya Traore, 31 and Yacou Doukoure, 29, both from the Ivory Coast were jailed following a long-winding investigation about a scam involving black money, which originated in Africa.

Police investigations revealed that the three men were involved in this scam whereby black carbonised paper was used to make people believe they were money. Real currency notes are placed on top of this black paper in order to make the person believe that the whole bundle of notes were in fact real notes.

According to evidence presented in court, the seller would then inform the victim that he would need to purchase a certain expensive liquid with which to de-carbonise the paper and turn it into real currency. This would obviously never take place. This idea originated in Africa, the court heard.

The men were found guilty of defrauding a Maltese property negotiator, of more than Lm12,000 in September last year.

The court heard how the man agreed to lend one of the accused the Lm12,000 which would be used to purchase the special liquid to turn the black paper into real cash.

Soon after the Maltese man started to receive threatening phone calls with the caller demanding E200,000 and this was when he informed the police about the matter.

In a 46-page judgement, magistrate Jacqueline Padovani jailed the men to two years, from which the time they spent in preventive custody should be deducted.

Inspectors Michael Mallia and Kevin Borg prosecuted.