Three men were placed in police custody Thursday in Maisons-Alfort (Val-de-Marne), suspected of having tried to resell nearly 40,000 expired masks in the midst of an epidemic caused by the new coronavirus, according to the Créteil prosecution.
Read also: Coronavirus: armed robbery with toilet paper in Hong Kong
These three men, aged 28, 21 and 20 years and from the Parisian suburbs for two of them, were arrested Thursday morning by the police, said this source confirming information from the Parisian. It was a neighbor who earlier in the morning had alerted the police, intrigued by the " incessant " round trips of these young people between the trash can of his building and their truck parked in the street. Once the police are there, they discover, in the garbage room, several boxes containing thousands of masks, all expired. " Using dissolvent, they tried to erase the expiration date to be able to resell them to the unit ", details a source close to the file. How did they get the masks? Is there a network behind these three men? " The hearings are in progress, " said the prosecution.
As the epidemic of the new coronavirus intensifies in France, the mask has become an object of lust. At least 8,300 masks were stolen from establishments of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP). In Marseille, 2,000 were stolen from the Conception Hospital. Tuesday, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron had announced that in order to avoid a shortage, the State was going to requisition " all the stocks and the production of protective masks " to distribute them to the caregivers and the people affected by the coronavirus.
Read also: LIVE - Coronavirus: 423 cases in France, seven deaths