In the family, there is the mother.
She is the head of the network, the one who organizes.
Then there is the father and the son who help her in this small business of… theft, concealment and export of vehicles.
On March 3, all three, as well as two of their acquaintances who took part in their trafficking, were arrested by the gendarmes of the research section of Versailles (Yvelines).
They will be judged on May 28 by the correctional court of Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) for theft and concealment in recidivism.
In the meantime, they have been placed under judicial supervision.
A loss of 130,000 euros
The investigation began in early November 2020 with the theft, in Val-d'Oise, of a Citroën DS7 Crossback SUV.
Cost of entry level: 37,000 euros.
The case is handled by the research section of Versailles (Yvelines).
She is betting on the network that would hide behind this file which, from the outset, looks like a banal car theft as it happens every day in Ile-de-France.
A few days later, the SUV was found in a parking lot in Blanc-Mesnil, in Seine-Saint-Denis.
There, it is marked out so that it can be followed remotely by investigators.
On November 18, the snitch takes them to a container transported by a truck heading for the port of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), where it must be loaded onto a boat, heading for the African continent.
The heavyweight was intercepted at Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines).
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Inside, the soldiers found the DS7 but also two other cars declared stolen, Toyota CHRs.
Global amount of damage: 130,000 euros.
The Versailles gendarmes went back to the receivers and noted that these thefts were organized as a family from Seine-Saint-Denis.
The mother, father and son take care of receiving and exporting while their two other accomplices are responsible for stealing and loading the cars.
For this work, they receive a commission.
Another member of the family acted as a relay at the end of the chain.
Electronic equipment, cash and weapons
The other two vehicles found were stolen in Seine-Saint-Denis and in Val-d'Oise, with the aim of being then shipped to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"Nothing allows to say if there were other thefts than these three cars", confides a source close to the investigation.
During the searches, electronic equipment used to start the vehicles was also discovered.
DR
The simultaneous arrest of the suspects mobilized 70 gendarmes, including intervention forces.
The searches brought to light specialized equipment allowing the re-encoding of keys and the connection to diagnostic sockets.
Thirteen thousand euros in cash were also found, as well as pellet or airsoft guns and spare parts.
The military also seized dozens of cell phones and computers.
