Nineteen people suspected of having usurped the identity of police officers, gendarmes and magistrates to defraud Internet users, were arrested on Monday in France and Belgium. Hundreds of thousands of fake summons to view child pornography images have been sent.
A vast dragnet in a fraud case involving false judicial summons: nineteen suspects arrested on Monday June 19 in France and Belgium, eighteen arrested in Île-de-France, Nantes, Le Mans, Toulouse, Sens (Yonne), Orléans and Nice, and one in Belgium, announced the gendarmerie and the police in a press release on Friday June 23.
These people are suspected of having sent thousands of fake summonses sent by email to consult child pornography sites and then demand money. Significant sums, between 1,400 and 90,000 euros, in exchange for the abandonment of legal proceedings. At least 3.3 million euros were defrauded.
>>> Beware of the scam of fraudulent emails accusing you of child pornography or cybercrime
Difficult to know at this stage, how many victims have paid. About 400 filed a complaint but hundreds of thousands of emails were sent, signed by senior police, gendarmerie and justice officials, identities were usurped.
Sometimes fatal consequences for the victims
In these alarmist messages, the scammers made Internet users believe that they had been spotted consulting child pornography on the Internet. At least six victims committed suicide after these false accusations. For the time being, it is not possible to formally establish a link. Investigations have been opened. One of them, for example, paid a “fine” of nearly 6,000 euros, but the usurpers then asked her for an additional 7,000 euros. The man, panicked, ended up committing suicide.
In early 2021, this phishing campaign flooded the entire French territory and led the Paris prosecutor’s office’s specialized cybercrime section to open an investigation. These investigations were entrusted to the police officers of the Central Office for the Fight against Cybercrime (OCLCTIC), to the gendarmes of the research section (SR) of Versailles to those of the ComCybergend and to the Nice Research Brigade, with the support of the European police agency Europol. In June 2022, the Pharos platform had 150,000 reports relating to this scam.
Upcoming trials
Fifteen of the nineteen suspects will be tried before a criminal court, said the Paris prosecutor’s office, without specifying the date of the hearing. Investigators have established that the defrauded money passed through fake accounts before being sent abroad, particularly to Côte d’Ivoire. It is also from this country that most of the emails were sent.
>>> Scams: false court summonses for child pornography, the new larceny of cyber-crooks
The investigators have not identified any structured network, it is rather, according to them, the same modus operandi, used massively by several isolated crooks. Since then, other scams have appeared, including bogus fine claims or fraudulent computer repair offers.