Wizbizla: Educating Expats to Combat Scams in Dubai
After losing her life savings to a scam, Amber Waheed founded Wizbizla to educate expats, verify credentials, and provide a trusted marketplace, combining AI-driven awareness with community support to protect residents from fraud in Dubai.
Amber Waheed shot to fame after beating a financial adviser in a scam that almost cost her her life savings. The experience drove her to found Wizbizla, a platform that exists to educate expats in Dubai about scams, fraud and misinformation, and provides a marketplace for trusted service providers.
A law graduate who worked as a lawyer coach with international firms including Linklaters, she spent years immersed in professional standards and regulatory frameworks designed to prevent exactly the kind of failures she would later encounter. After relocating to Dubai 20 years ago, Amber was scammed by someone posing as a licensed financial adviser. The credentials appeared legitimate, the language was convincing, and the structure felt professional. When the investment collapsed, she felt helpless, but after months she described reaching her breaking point.
“I realised this wasn’t just about money; it was about years of sacrifice, responsibility, and trust abused.”
Instead of walking away, she fought back. Amber took the case through the Dubai courts, challenged it, won, and recovered her investment. The reputation of the so-called financial adviser was tarnished beyond repair and he was forced to relocate, unable to do further business in Dubai.
This victory became the starting point for the next phase of Amber’s career. She published a book describing what happened and what it took to pursue justice abroad, including the reputational weight that can follow when your name becomes attached to a scam, even as a victim. Her story attracted international attention, including coverage from CNN and local Dubai media, and it struck a nerve with expats who recognised the pattern immediately.
After the case, people began coming to Amber with their own scam stories. Many had faced scam related exposure and did not know where to turn, or how to challenge what had happened. Those conversations led to educational content, a podcast where victims share their experiences, and an informal support network built around real cases and real consequences.
That is what led to Wizbizla. Amber built the platform so expats can verify credentials, understand how common scams operate, and avoid learning the hard way.
“My loss became the warning shot. Wizbizla is the solution.”
The platform combines credential verification with scam education and reporting tools designed to raise awareness of potential scam threats, and provide a platform where trusted providers can sell reputable services. It stands to protect expats as they do business in Dubai, and creates a community for the businesses themselves to garner a good reputation, especially relevant given that 200,000 Brits emigrated to the city just last quarter.
Their latest educational video sits at the very heart of that mission.
Wizbizla recently created an AI-generated video explaining how a Christmas event, promoted online through Facebook group “Real Brits in Dubai” as charitable, was allegedly a scam to drum up investment for the man behind the group. The video did not name or identify anyone, but the Brit behind the scheme has filed a criminal complaint claiming he recognised himself in the AI-created story, and that it harmed his reputation. In the legal paperwork, references to charity were removed and the event was re-described as a private dinner, despite being publicly promoted as a charity dinner in local media sources.
This is a crucial detail - in removing references to the charity element of the dinner (so as to not fall foul of strict Dubai laws when it comes to naming activities as charitable), he has outed himself. He is seeking harsh penalties for Amber, including jail time, a fine, and a travel ban (the latter has already been dismissed by the courts).
For Amber, his scam is merely one of many. As she has said, the case was never about targeting individuals, it was about education, transparency, and protecting people from being misled.
The case now being tested in court has become part of a bigger question about how education, storytelling and reputation collide when AI is involved, and with Wizbizla providing a trusted platform, we hope that this case serves as a warning to others who are out to scam innocent, hard-working people.
