The first was only 15 years old. This teenager’s life changed last Wednesday, when he responded to an ad posted on social networks by a member of the DZ Mafia, one of the cartels controlling cannabis trafficking in Marseille. In exchange for 2,000 euros, he had to set fire to the door of a competing dealer to intimidate him. But the mission turned sour. The young man was quickly spotted by a gang present at the foot of the building. “He will be stabbed with 50 stab wounds and taken to the Fonscolombes city, where, according to the results of the autopsy, he will be burned alive,” said the public prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, on Saturday.
The second is only 14 years old. Originally from Vaucluse, he too was recruited via social networks by the same man, aged 23, currently detained near Aix-en-Provence. His mission, paid 50,000 euros? Avenge the victim by killing a member of the “Blacks” clan. To carry out his contract, last Friday, he ordered a VTC, aged 36. As the driver did not want to wait for him, he coldly shot him in the head.
“Deter and serious”
There is “a total loss of bearings which will cause young boys to respond to advertisements, not to go harvest the grapes or even to sell cannabis resin at a deal point, but to go and take the life of “others without any remorse, without any reflection”, observed Nicolas Bessonne, emphasizing the “role of social networks” in these cases of narchomicide, the number of which is soaring in the Marseille city.
In Marseille, as elsewhere in France, drug traffickers have long used Snapchat or TikTok to promote their deal points. Although illegal, these companies use social networks to make themselves known to customers, explain to them how to come, and inform them of opening hours and promotions. Network heads also use them to recruit labor, attracted by easy money. According to employers, a lookout will receive between 140 and 200 euros per day, a salesman between 250 and 330 euros. “Smoke, food, free accommodation”, specifies one of the offers posted on TikTok by members of a “four” in the 14th arrondissement of Marseille. Another asks candidates to be “hard-working and serious.”
“Sicario is a job now”
“Social networks are Pôle emploi,” quips Eric Henry, national delegate of the Alliance union. “We find advertisements for being lookouts, or coal miners [vendeurs]at such a place and over such a period. And even hitman, with more or less remuneration depending on the target, depending on the risk taken. There is an obligation to achieve results under penalty of sanction. Kids, attracted by the possibility of earning money immediately, can come from all over France to carry out a contract in Marseille. The resource is infinite, because in working-class neighborhoods there is a high percentage of very young people,” continues the trade unionist.
PJ investigators also note a rejuvenation of the small hands of trafficking, used like cannon fodder by the heads of networks like the DZ Mafia or Yoda. “This isn’t the first time we’ve had this kind of thing. But we never really had people this young,” underlines a well-informed police source. Traffickers find, thanks to social networks, “younger and younger people from the suburbs” whom they hire as “hired killers”. “This is not an announcement in Release either, but they recruit them via social networks, and then using encrypted applications. Sicario is a job now. These young people have no reference points, they are completely lost. There are plenty of them and they are extremely dangerous. »