We don’t know how long they had been running their car registration scam business, but the fact remains that they did well. But as everything has an end, the six suspects were indicted after having fraudulently registered thousands of vehicles and embezzled hundreds of thousands of euros in VAT, we learned from the Lille public prosecutor’s office.
They had made a specialty of messing with the SIV, the vehicle registration system. On the surface, the crooks had a legal activity and their company, based in Lens, in Pas-de-Calais, was even authorized by the prefecture to carry out registration missions. Moreover, it is this authorization that will allow them to scheme vigorously. According to the prosecution, the first scam consisted of “fraudulently modifying the origin of the vehicles”, essentially with the aim of not paying VAT for imported vehicles. Investigators thus estimated that the suspects “defrauded more than 520,000 euros from the public treasury”.
Unofficial Suppliers to Offenders
There is another, more worrying aspect to their activities. Their access to the SIV made it easier for suspects to issue registration documents for vehicles without technical inspection or, worse, to allow the registration of stolen vehicles after modification of the serial numbers. They also had the habit of registering vehicles “in the name of ghost garages”, which were run by “straw managers” or by people with false identities or usurped identities, details the prosecution. The idea being to resell these untraceable vehicles to criminals for various activities, including drug trafficking.
A preliminary investigation was opened in July, followed by the opening of a judicial investigation on September 29, on charges of fraud, damage to an automated data processing system, money laundering and participation in an association. of criminals with a view to preparing crimes. Eight people were arrested at the beginning of November, and six were indicted, one of whom was placed in pre-trial detention. All face ten years in prison.