Six men, aged 24 to 40, were arrested Tuesday by investigators from the Angers judicial police and the Sarthe gendarmerie group, who suspect them of being at the heart of a vast case of scams in organized gang. “They proceeded to the fraudulent opening of bank accounts abroad fed by online credits entered using spoofed identities”, indicates the public prosecutor’s office of Mans in a press release on Friday.
The case began in 2019 when the attention of Tracfin – the French intelligence service in charge of the fight against tax fraud – turned to around thirty bank accounts “which were functioning abnormally”, explained to 20 minutes Commissioner Franck Hemery, director of the Angers PJ. These accounts were opened fraudulently by several people using documents of questionable authenticity to take out credits online.
793,000 euros in damages
The authors have usurped “around sixty identities, extracted from client files of companies specializing in home improvement, in particular thanks to the complicity of a commercial agent who collected photocopies of his clients’ identity documents. », Adds the public prosecutor’s office at Le Mans. The investigators finally manage, over the course of their investigations, to identify six men, already well known to their services, as well as three companies that have generated damage of more than 793,000 euros for banking establishments.
Investigators seized 17,000 euros from the suspects’ bank accounts. Presented to the prosecution after 48 hours in police custody, five of them came out free and were placed under judicial supervision. The sixth, presented by the prosecution as “the main instigator”, was remanded in custody. They will be judged on November 5. They face a ten-year prison sentence.