Three women and a man, Bosnians aged 22 to 35, were placed on Wednesday evening under a warrant of committal after being in police custody in Quimper. They will be judged on April 7 for several hundred pickpocketing throughout France and in several European countries.
The gendarmes have just put an end to the practices of a band of pickpockets with a very well-honed technique. A technique as simple as it is formidable: “shoulder surfing”. It involves obtaining confidential information by stepping over the shoulder of the victim, and then stealing their money. The modus operandi is not new, but this time the thieves managed to use it industrially.
This group made up of three women and a man, all Bosnians, aged 22 to 35, were arrested on Sunday February 26 in Brive-la-Gaillarde (Corrèze), this is franceinfo information this Thursday. From a source familiar with the matter, all four of them were referred this Wednesday to the Quimper prosecutor’s office. All already known to justice, they were placed Wednesday evening under a warrant of deposit pending their judgment in immediate appearance, deferred to April 7. Justice accuses them of having seized at least 153,000 euros during several hundred pick-pocketing all over France and abroad since the beginning of 2022.
Victims spotted in supermarkets
It all starts in 2022 in Brittany. All over the region, especially in Finistère and in the suburbs of Rennes, people come to the gendarmerie to file a complaint, with a concentration of complaints at the end of the year. All of them had their wallets stolen with their credit cards in them when they had just shopped at the supermarket. Over the year 2022, 35 cases are thus listed, including 19 in Brittany, 16 in the Great West. Thanks to video surveillance, the various gendarmerie brigades seized highlight the same scenario with always the same people, identified thanks to video surveillance images of supermarkets.
Three women and a man, of Bosnian nationality, based in Spain, regularly make ten-day trips to France, franceinfo learned from a source familiar with the matter. They recover each time cars with false plates and act in the following way: the man, 35 years old – obviously the leader of the group – is on the lookout and supervises the operations. Meanwhile, the three women between the ages of 22 and 25 enter the supermarket and spot their victims. Then they slip into the queue at the store’s checkout, hold the customer behind him entering his credit card code, and keep it in their heads.
Then, details General Marc de Tarlé, commander of the Central Office for the Fight against Itinerant Delinquency (OCLDI) joined by franceinfo, “either the same woman steals the wallet or an accomplice takes care of it when the customer leaves the store. In some cases, they even went so far as to pretend to be sick to be driven to the hospital” and take advantage of the kindness of their victims. Once the wallet is in your pocket, “the group is hurrying to multiply withdrawals with the stolen credit card” before the victim objects, reports the OCLDI commander.
“A mechanism very well run and very efficient”
Faced with the scale of the phenomenon, in mid-December, the departmental intelligence and investigation brigade of Rennes distributed a sheet to all the barracks in the country to find out if the band had been able to act elsewhere in France. The result is not long in coming: it turns out that this same and unique group is suspected of having operated everywhere in France, and even beyond: in Italy, Switzerland, Croatia, Germany and Spain. This group is suspected of several hundred pickpocketing and fraud.
Finally, on January 13, the investigation was brought together within the same national investigation unit. The Quimper prosecutor’s office (Finistère) seized the Quimper gendarmerie research brigade and the OCLDI. The investigators then set up a discreet surveillance operation and thanks to cross-border observation work they realize that the group is constantly coming and going between France and Spain.
For Marc de Tarlé, the commander of the OCLDI, “the mechanism is very well run and very efficient”. For this specialist in this type of delinquency, this Bosnian group “is one of the most seasoned bands” in this type of pickpocketing. He is delighted to have been able to dismantle this network alongside the Quimper research brigade. Finally, on Sunday February 26, the three women and the man are located in a hotel in Brive-la-Gaillarde. As they prepare to go back down to Spain, they are arrested. On them, the investigators get their hands on 12,000 euros, the gendarmes believe that it is a loot collected over three days. They will be tried in Quimper on April 7.