450 euros per package. Four packages minimum for the team to travel near a remand center. These were the rules laid down by the Snapchat account “Drone2France” – now dismantled – which offered to deliver detainees to prison using drones. In the packages, drugs or smartphones most often. A vast search, requiring the intervention of nearly 80 gendarmes, was carried out at the start of the week in the Paris region and Hauts-de-France. Eight people were arrested. On Thursday, three of them – including a couple – were indicted, in particular for drug trafficking, illicit delivery of objects to detainees, money laundering, etc. and placed in pre-trial detention, indicated the Tulle public prosecutor’s office. A fourth, already incarcerated in Toulouse, was also indicted in this case.
“They had set up a sort of Uber for the prisons,” summarizes Lieutenant-Colonel Denis Dempuré, head of the Limoges research section, who carried out the investigations with the Brive-la-Gaillarde brigade. It all started at the beginning of January, when the guards at the Uzerche remand center in Corrèze spotted a package attached to a drone which landed within the establishment. Above all, they manage to identify the inmate who ordered it. A search is carried out in his cell: not only is the package containing several smartphones and drugs found, but they also seize another phone that the suspect was already using.
Deliveries to Belgium
Technical exploitation of the phone makes it possible to discover that the individual placed an order via a Snapchat application which specializes in this “commerce”. They offer deliveries throughout France. Fresnes, Epinal, Châteauroux, Tarascon, Metz… The authors of this account delivered packages to at least fifteen prison establishments in France. “We also realized that they were making deliveries to Belgium,” explains Lieutenant-Colonel Denis Dempuré.
When an order was placed, the drones were transported near the establishment – within a radius of approximately one or two kilometers – and relatives of the prisoners – accomplices, friends, family – entrusted them with the product(s) to be sent. The packages were then delivered either to the courtyard of the establishment, or, more generally, directly to the window of the person who had placed the order.
A turnover of 160,000 euros in a few months
“What is surprising is that they really presented themselves as a service provider,” specifies the gendarme. On their account, they sometimes offer promotions, advertise, etc. The investigation showed that between October 2022 and April 2023, the turnover is around 160,000 euros. “That’s what we were able to demonstrate,” insists the lieutenant-colonel, implying that the amount could be higher. For almost a year, four of its agents worked full time on this file to identify the perpetrators.
The couple cited above, based in Hauts-de-France, are suspected of being at the head of the network. Several accomplices are said to be in Ile-de-France. According to our information, all of them are very unfavorably known to the police, are repeat offenders, particularly for drug trafficking. One of the heads of the network had just come out of a year of pre-trial detention for drug trafficking when the account was launched. During the searches, the gendarmes found “only” two drones, a few drone trackers and 2.3 kg of cannabis. Two luxury cars and leather goods were also seized. “We didn’t expect to find much because we are still struggling to identify how the money generated by this trafficking was used,” confides Denis Dempuré. Investigations continue.