Involved in a vast fraud case, the founder of the sports prediction site PronoClub, Thomas Boursin, was arrested and taken into custody by investigators from the judicial police, learns 20 minutes from concordant sources. The suspect will be presented to the prosecution this Friday afternoon. “It is a relief”, reacts Me Olivier Géral who defends “a very large number of victims”. About 400 fraud complaints were filed against the site with the public prosecutor of Nanterre, including one from the National Gaming Authority (ANJ).
This social network connecting bettors and sports forecasters, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) and which is run by Thomas Boursin, is suspected of having defrauded hundreds of users. Dozens of complaints, dating back to November 2020, have been entrusted to the Departmental Directorate for the Protection of the Populations (DDPP) and to the central service of races and games, added the prosecution.
Several million damage
Following these complaints, an investigation was opened for “snowball sales”; a sponsorship sales system, falling under an infringement of the Consumer Code. At the beginning of September, 43 new complaints were registered, this time for “fraud”, and joined to the first procedure. “In total, we reached nearly a hundred complaints, which may continue to arrive,” according to the prosecution.
The National Gaming Authority (ANJ) also lodged a complaint for “fraud” on June 11 before the prosecution. The majority of complaints are aimed at a specific service of the platform, which offered users to invest their money to be played for them. But this service was “closed in the spring”, announces The Parisian. According to Mr. Géral, the loss of the victims is estimated between 10 and 50 million euros. “It is of a rather rare scale”, judges the lawyer. “Now we’ll have to get our hands on the money. “