“You are being prosecuted for child pornography” … This is how the e-mail that many Internet users have received in recent months begins. This e-mail, which is presented as “a judicial summons” truer than life, accuses the recipient of sharing, disseminating and exchanging pornographic or child pornographic supports, and of having committed sexual attacks on minors.
The document is often signed by the director general of the national gendarmerie, General Christian Rodriguez, and indicates to the person who received the email that he is the subject of a summons by a judicial police officer for viewing child pornography images. .
My beautiful @NikiShey I hope we will be in the same cell. 🙏🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/KWDxEYhIQn
– Sasha Beckermann (@SashaBeckermann) December 25, 2021
“For the sake of confidentiality”, specifies the text, the recipient is thus requested to make heard by e-mail his justifications, and this “within 72 hours”, beyond which a report will be transmitted to the prosecutor of Créteil. The person will also be registered in “the file of sex offenders” and his file will be transmitted “to associations fighting against pedophilia and to several national television channels” if he does not pay a fine.
A very large-scale scam
These emails which usurp the name of the national gendarmerie, the national police, the Paris police headquarters and Europol, are obviously a scam, the objective of which is to get you to pay a sum of money. or to have your personal data communicated to you.
A large number of Internet users have thus been trapped. The latter end up paying a “fine” of around 250 euros. Fraudsters ask them to pay this amount with PCS coupons, bought from a tobacconist, which allow scammers to credit cards and then withdraw the money from ATMs abroad.
#scam False offenses but real scams!
You receive an email that appears to come from the #gendarmerie
Does he tell you that the authorities are aware that you have consulted child pornographic or pornographic sites and that you will be listed soon? pic.twitter.com/VjiH8xpSbo– Prefect of Pyrénées-Orientales (@ Prefet66) October 6, 2021
Experts from the national victim assistance system, Cybermalveillance, estimate that hundreds of thousands of people must have received this attempted scam within a few months.
The ComCyberGend (command of the gendarmerie in cyberspace) indicates that this scam would have worked on approximately “10% of the recipients”.
Never respond and report
The authorities wish to recall that “the services of the Ministry of the Interior never send an email to proceed with hearings. The offenses mentioned in this pseudo-summons are never subject to a transaction. Their treatment is part of the judicial framework under the supervision of a magistrate ”.
The Ministry of the Interior also recommends not to respond to these mails, never to pay the sums requested and not to click on the attachments that may accompany the mail. It also encourages people to report this type of incident via the site www.cybermalveillance.gouv.fr and / or to the email address [email protected] so that it is taken into account in the context of the investigation opened by the Central Office for the Fight against Crime Related to Information and Communication Technologies (OCLCTIC).