Eight men suspected of being involved in a fraud committed in December 2021 at the expense of a Paris property developer with a record loss of 38 million euros were arrested between June 2022 and January, the Paris prosecutor said the investigation.
Six of them, involved in the money laundering of the scam, were arrested in the Paris region in June 2022 and January 2023 and the other two in Israel in July 2022, as part of an investigation launched by the finance department of the national jurisdiction for the fight against organized crime (Junalco).
Those arrested in France, two of whom were arrested at the request of the Portuguese authorities, have currently been released without charge. No extradition request has been made at this time in relation to the two arrests in Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.
A total of 3.9 million criminal assets were seized, including €700,000 in cryptocurrency.
The modus operandi of the so-called “President Scam” consists of impersonating a company’s manager in order to convince an employee to make a false transfer order.
In December 2021, the accountant of real estate developer Sefri-Cime, headquartered in Paris, received a call from a scammer posing as a lawyer.
“He uses the pretext of a confidential operation to take over companies with the approval of the company president,” Commissioner Vincent Kozierow, head of the Paris Police Department’s Payment Fraud Brigade (BFMP), told AFP.
The accountant then receives an email posing as the CEO and confirming that the operation is being carried out at his request.
In total, more than 40 transfers were made in just a few weeks, for a total of 38 million euros, a record in France.
The scam is eventually discovered and the company files a complaint.
At the same time, a metallurgical company in Haute-Marne was also the victim of a “presidential fraud” with damage of 300,000 euros.
The gendarmes of the research department of Reims, who are in charge of this file, and the PFY of Paris, thanks to the use of the telephone lines, quickly understand that they are dealing with the same team.
Your two companies will then be combined under the authority of Junalco.
Investigators, with the help of Europol, managed to trace the funds flowing through various bank accounts opened under false identities and in the name of fictitious companies, particularly in Portugal, Spain, Hungary and Croatia.