Around thirty priests victims of a vast fraud
Since 2018, around thirty priests across France have fallen victim to a vast organised gang scam. In order to operate, 16 fraudsters posed as parishioners in difficulty. They were arrested by the Seine-Maritime police on Wednesday 16 December when two of the criminals attempted to rob a priest for the umpteenth time. The two individuals were attempting to rob the priest by buying a vehicle with a bad cheque. The damage caused by this large-scale scam, which began in 2018, amounts to €150,000.
A network of scammers in Normandy
Around forty police officers were mobilised to dismantle this network of fraudsters, which had been operating for two years in Normandy. The police said that the criminals were targeting priests, many of whom were elderly. It was the Le Havre municipal police force that led to the arrest of the first two crooks who were attempting a new scam, and also helped to identify and arrest the 14 other accomplices of the criminals. The latter were taken into custody by the Le Havre police.
150,000 euros stolen from priests since 2018
The method used by the swindlers was always the same. They would telephone priests pretending to be former parishioners. To do this, they would use false names to avoid being traced and would tell the men of the church that they were in serious financial difficulty in order to win them over. In doing so, they would appeal to the charity of the priests, asking them to help them. Often, the criminals would then offer to buy the priests' cars. At the time of the transaction, they would use forged cheques, better known as wooden cheques. Wooden cheques are bad cheques. In other words, the crooks gave cheques to their victims when they had no money in their bank accounts. It is therefore a false means of payment because the amount of the transaction can never be received by the victims of these schemes.
To return to the case, an accomplice of the criminals posed as a fake policeman in order to reassure them and put the men of the Church in confidence. The priests then found themselves without a car and without the sum of money initially earmarked for the transaction. As a reminder, in the space of two years, around thirty priests have fallen victim to these schemes and €150,000 has been stolen.
Previous cases with similar facts
The network behind this huge scam could be linked to other similar cases. Between 2001 and 2012, a similar scam was identified, this time involving 158 priests. It was Jacky Baudet and Michel Gosse who managed to steal priests over a 10-year period, posing as parishioners in financial difficulty. The modus operandi for this case was the same as that to which priests have fallen victim since 2018.
Avoid online scams with Obvy
In this case, the criminals used a false means of payment to defraud the priests. This false method of payment, known as wooden cheques, is a technique used by many fraudsters in transactions between private individuals. It allows them to remain untraceable and the victim only realises a few days later, when it's too late, that they have been swindled.
To avoid any scams of this type, whether between private individuals or between professionals and your customers, we advise you to use a secure payment method for your transactions. Obvy, our secure payment solution for private and business customers, was created with this in mind. Our aim is to deal with scammers and eradicate online scams on the second-hand market. So if you go through an online ad site like Leboncoin, make sure you're protected with a secure payment method like Obvy. This will enable you to trace the seller or buyer in the event of a scam attempt, and to recover the amount of the transaction free of charge.