The thugs redouble their inventiveness to extract money from the most vulnerable.
And their methods continue to work.
Investigators from the Territorial Directorate of Local Security 75 allowed the dismantling on Tuesday of a vast organized gang scam.
The police counted 105 people scammed for damage of nearly 815,000 euros,
Le Figaro
learned from corroborating
sources, confirming information from France Inter.
Read also: These various scams that are costly to public finances
"It's a scam that surprises with its well-established operating mode
,
"
says our source.
Seeking to recover money at any cost, the crooks telephoned the homes of private Parisians.
Their target?
Mostly wealthy people from the 16th, 17th and 8th arrondissements.
“
To get the hang of it, they simply used the directory and looked for old names and surnames likely to be fooled,
” said the same source.
Fake cops, fake bankers
The phone call is clever: the bandit pretends to be a false police officer and indicates that he is investigating a team of criminals specializing in the theft of bank details.
He informs them that a theft has taken place on their account, causing panic among often elderly interlocutors.
Eloquent, the crooks "
perfectly mastered the vocabulary used by the police, starting with their procedures
", underlines our source.
Read also: Bank cards: payment fraud is on the decline
The false policeman then makes the future victim wait with music on hold used in the police services, "
thus giving credibility to their approach
", we continue.
A second scammer, pretending to be a bogus bank employee, then takes over.
Also aware of the procedures carried out in establishments of this type, he succeeded in extracting the credit card codes from the poor victims.
Four people in custody
This procedure was observed by DTSP 75 during the first confinement.
But the criminals were able to continue their scams for months on end by using short-lived telephone lines.
After a few weeks, they changed their SIM card, limiting the risk of being detected.
With all the bank details recovered, the crooks were able to make dozens of fraudulent online purchases from household appliance brands, major luxury brands, clothing and even bags.
Of the 815,000 euros of damage, 275,000 have been consumed, that is to say that the purchases have already been made.
The head of the gondola of this network, a French native of Seine-Saint-Denis, is very unfavorably known to the police services.
To succeed in dismantling this well organized network, the police finally managed to trace the telephony and the purchases made by the delinquents.
They first succeeded in identifying a first individual who had come to collect orders, thanks to video surveillance.
Then to go back to other members of the group, by tapping them.
They waited until Tuesday, when one of them had come to pick up yet another order, to challenge him.
A total of four people were arrested and taken into police custody.
Read the file: Big scams: the incredible daring of professional scammers
The head of the gondola of this network, a French native of Seine-Saint-Denis, is very unfavorably known to the police services.
The same goes for his various associates, also from 93. During a search of the home of one of the suspects, several thousand euros in cash were found, as well as various luxury items.
Cannabis was also seized.
According to our information, other police operations are expected in the coming days.
