In the middle of the night, in a beautiful apartment in Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis), Dan J. wakes up his wife and two children, buckles up a few suitcases and hits the road. This Tuesday evening, the 30-year-old Franco-Israeli has just found that all his bank accounts had been emptied and frozen. At 2 a.m., the family heads for Switzerland to catch a plane to Tel Aviv (Israel). Dan J. does not know it, but the gendarmes of the Central Office for the fight against illegal work and the research section of Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) have been following him for several days. When he arrives at the Replonges (Ain) tollbooth, a welcoming committee falls on him. Dan J. and his wife are arrested. A few hours later, in Paris, his parents and sister were in turn taken into police custody.
This Friday, Dan J., his wife and his father were indicted in particular for fraud by an organized gang, money laundering, criminal conspiracy and concealment of property as part of a judicial investigation opened in January by the National Court in charge of the fight against organized crime (Junalco), according to a judicial source. Dan J. and his father sleep in prison. The J. family is suspected of having played a leading role in the resounding short-time work scam. On their own, Dan J. and his relatives are said to have embezzled more than 11 million euros of public money intended to help companies during the Covid-19 crisis. The investigation established that the family had attempted to plunder more than 40 million euros in public aid in total.
In a box belonging to the father, the gendarmes seized 1.7 million euros in cash, luxury watches worth 230,000 euros, as well as gold and diamond jewelry.
750,000 dollars (more than 630,000 euros) were also blocked in a bank account.
The gendarmes also unearthed, with the help of Europol, a sophisticated circuit of money laundering via cryptocurrencies ...
Read also Fraud in short-time work: millions of euros embezzled
Go back a year. On March 16, 2020, the population is confined, businesses closed. “The partial unemployment scheme will be massively expanded,” promises Emmanuel Macron. Two months later, the Regional Directorate for Enterprises, Competition, Consumption, Labor and Employment (Direccte) in Occitanie detected a first fraud. In Limoges (Haute-Vienne), the organization identifies 1,200 suspicious requests. The phenomenon turns out to be national, the loophole detected by the crooks juicy. These scam pros are usurping the identity of small businesses and asking for partial unemployment on behalf of these companies… but it is on their accounts that they are transferring the money. Economic emergency requires, controls are rare and the money transferred almost without verification by the State. The scam is becoming sprawling.When the Paris public prosecutor's office takes back control of all the procedures, the total amount of aid unduly requested amounts to 182 million euros! The state manages to stop the bleeding and the transfers, but 53 million are already far away.
"Excellent cooperation" with the Israeli police
In this scheme, Dan J. would have served as "luxury logistician" of one of the criminal groups.
He would have thus claimed partial unemployment on behalf of 3,600 usurped companies.
He is also suspected of having supervised the opening by “bank mules” of dozens of accounts used to transfer indemnities to France before their departure abroad, where money becomes much more difficult to trace.
By working on these accounts, the gendarmes were able to prevent the flight of 3 million euros abroad ... and identify Dan J. For weeks, the young man and his entourage, suspected of helping him hide the money , are watched by the OCLTI and the Toulouse SR who confirm their suspicions and the troubled role of Dan J.
The Israeli authorities are notified and take over when the father goes to the Hebrew state, where he has many contacts and a foothold. This Wednesday, at the same time as the arrest of Dan J., a relative of the father was also arrested and interviewed in Israel before being released. In Netanya, in a "call center" used by the organization to mount its scams, the Israeli police also seized a large sum of money as well as high-tech computer equipment.
The Israeli Embassy praises “the excellent cooperation between the police services of the two countries. This collaboration has resulted in the arrest, conviction and extradition of many criminals in recent years. But this investigation is not over yet. A leading man in the network, Dan J. is probably not one of the designers of the scam, who are likely to be in Israel and to be involved in other short-time fraud frauds ...
