One is an engineer, the other a baker, and in a pavilion with red shutters in Valdoie, in the Belfort region, they produced fake identity cards on an assembly line.
The duo sold them via Telegram, until the fall of one of their resellers, “La Genèverie”, which led to them being judged in Paris.
Six other defendants with heterogeneous profiles have been appearing with them since Monday until March 20 before the criminal court for their alleged involvement in this vast network of forgeries, between beautiful watches and permits for handling equipment, which was this encrypted channel.
Tuesday at the bar, Anthony P., 28 years old, and Aurélien, 23 years old, two associates met during a laser game and judged in particular for falsification of identity cards between 2022 and 2023. After their arrest in April 2023, the investigators find printers, airbrushes and hydraulic presses in their workshop, an apartment rented under a false identity in a residential building.
The two forgers mention the production of 3000 identity cards and the equivalent of more than 400,000 euros collected.
Among the approximately 300 photos found, 40% of the people appear in the TAJ (criminal history processing file) and 27 are actively sought by the police.
The brain
It is Anthony P., son of a hairdresser and a worker father, who is the brains of this little business.
DUT and computer science degree in hand, while he works in a large company specializing in cybersecurity, he is also teeming with ideas about services to sell on the darknet.
The one who calls himself online “Volrys” has already made his
“first fake”
, prompted, he assures, by an elderly person.
She
“asked me how to make a date on a fake invoice”
, there was a
“slip”
,
“I made more and more”
.
He does market studies on falsified checks, counterfeit diplomas
, “a real fair of forgeries”,
summarizes the president.
But because
“the darknet in France is dying”
and there are
“so many problems between administrators who scam sellers”
, he switches to Telegram.
When the production of false papers
“started to take off, we had to automate
,” explains Anthony P., impassive.
He then recruits Aurélien C., a former baker who knew the street, worked in the factory before diving into forgeries to repay his debts before, he hoped, joining the ranks, those of the navy in particular.
Up to ten cards per day
The Volrys team is ramping up, manufacturing up to ten cards per day, sold for between 100 and 400 euros depending on the quality chosen, with possible reductions for incarcerated people.
The customer entered Telegram, contacted a chatbot, then received a link to a site that generated a form including biometric data and a photo ID.
Manufacturing began once the information had been validated.
Payment was made either in cryptocurrencies or in PCS coupons sold in particular in tobacco shops and which allow prepaid payment cards to be credited.
“Any money we took out in crypto went into Monero, the only way to make the funds untraceable
,” explains Anthony P.
As for the resellers, five stand out, including “Sin papeles”, “Geo TrouveTout”
and “
La Gèneverie”
,
the last not being the most important, assure the two defendants who appear free, unlike the administrator of this Telegram channel .
However, they continue to do business with him while he is in detention.
At the time of their arrest, they had already scaled back, they want to convince, and intended to
“set up a legal case”.
Why not have done it, asks the prosecutor.
For a story of kidnapping, theft of equipment and ransoms
"by people with problems", "it was a little frustrating to see that we had only received problems",
says Anthony
P.
Also questioned about the use of the fakes they produced, Aurélien C. thought it was to
“release free phones”.
“One of the dealers is a Comorian smuggling network,”
objects the prosecutor.
“I thought it was a joke”
and,
“sin papeles (without papers in Spanish), I only understood yesterday what that meant,”
replies Anthony P.
“I did English and Spanish though”
, he said without blinking.