Two men from Cameroon were each jailed for nine months today after they admitted to conspiring to defraud a man by giving him fake cash in exchange for his Hummer four-wheel drive vehicle through a “black money scam”.

Marcelin Kamwa, 37, and Jean Jacques Tientcheu, 40, admitted before magistrate Doreen Clarke to committing the crime on September 7.

During the arraignment police inspector Jonathan Ferris, prosecuting, had said he was informed by a man that two men approached him to exchange his Hummer for €50,000 in cash. However, they told him that the cash would be covered in black iodine-based dye that could be washed off.

Mr Ferris and his colleagues monitored the whereabouts of the two men. The pair drove to an area in Qui-Si-Sana, Sliema, where they informed the victim how to wash off the black dye using a special solution and demonstrated it on a genuine €50 note.

The victim told police the deal was to be concluded and, at 9.30am on September 14, officers went to the Astra Hotel in Sliema. In the room occupied by the two men they found the false money being prepared.