MAKKAH, 22 May 2008 "” The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Makkah closed down yesterday a pharmacy for running a confidence racket. The commission said the man running the shop, a Pakistani national, was offering "black magic" services to customers.

Vice police raided the store, which was disguised as a pharmacy, and confiscated amulets and other tools of the trade. The suspect said people were coming to him asking for magical cures because they were unsatisfied with the services they were receiving at area hospitals.

The man was exploiting people's superstitions and offering them charlatan treatments. The owner of the pharmacy denied being aware that the man he hired to run the pharmacy was running this side racket.

In an unrelated event, a Saudi man was arrested yesterday for running a similar scam from his home. The man was caught after a woman came to him hoping for a magical cure that would prevent her husband from leaving her. After the young woman's husband left her, she informed her father that she tried a magical cure; the father then informed the moral police.

The authorities treat confidence rackets as a religious crime, and suspects are often arrested and charged outright with being sorcerers and witches (rather than shysters) for offering various services to people who believe in magical cures and curses. Penalties for such crimes are often quite stiff, even resulting in the death penalty.