A large gang of crooks was unmasked by the Seine-Maritime police on Wednesday, December 16, while two thugs were trying to steal a priest.
Caught in the act, the duo was buying a vehicle from the clergyman with a fraudulent check, the national police told
Le Figaro
.
An investigation has been opened.
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26 priests victims of false parishioners
Forty police officers were mobilized to dismantle in Normandy this band of con artists who had been acting in the shadows for two years.
Their target: priests "
often very old
", specify the police.
The arrest of the first two bandits by the personnel of the urban municipal security of Le Havre made it possible to identify and arrest 14 other accomplices, currently in custody by the police of Le Havre.
An accomplice pretended to be a false gendarme to reassure the priests and gain their trust.
The evildoers always proceeded in the same way: they called priests by phone, pretended to be former parishioners using false names and confided the priests in great financial difficulties.
Appealing to the charity of the priests, the false parishioners asked to come to their aid.
Often, scammers would offer priests to buy back their cars, using blank checks.
An accomplice pretended to be a false gendarme to reassure the priests and gain their trust.
In total, since 2018, 26 priests have been victims of these acts.
150,000 euros were stolen, found in cash during the searches.
Several previous similar cases
The network of these 16 crooks could turn out to be much larger and perhaps linked to other cases where the same process was used.
"
It is possible that the police crossed with other cases to find the 14 other accomplices
", affirms the national police force.
Between 2001 and 2012, 158 priests were victims of a similar scam: Michel Gosse and Jacky Baudet had succeeded for 15 years in extorting money from men of the Church by posing as parishioners in difficulty.
In 2010, 14 complaints were filed, revealing that the modus operandi was still the same.
But still other bandits could be implicated: according to Europe 1, several crooks have been arrested for similar acts but have been awaiting trial for two years.
80 victims, all priests, would be affected.
