The young Frenchman and his relatives have embezzled more than 11 million public money intended to help businesses during the coronavirus pandemic crisis.
Fraudsters obtained the identification data of more than 3 thousand enterprises and tried to obtain financial assistance on their behalf.
The family decided to flee France at night. The day before, one of the participants in the scheme discovered that all his bank accounts were frozen. Realizing what was happening, after midnight, a 30-year-old man of Franco-Israeli descent woke up his wife and two children. In a hurry, they packed up and drove to Switzerland to catch a plane there in the morning to Tel Aviv. But they had no idea that they were already being followed.
The man, his wife and father have now been indicted on charges of organized gang fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and concealment of property in a judicial investigation launched in January by the National Court.
During a search in a shoebox, investigators seized 1.7 million in cash, a luxury watch worth 230 thousand, as well as gold and diamond jewelry, 630 thousand were blocked in a bank account. In total, according to the investigation, more than 11 million were illegally obtained.
The scam started in 2020 when the French government decided to fight unemployment during the COVID-19 period. It was then that a small company filed about a thousand suspicious job openings. The aforementioned young man was at the head of the company. Financial assistance came to her accounts, the company did not perform any work, nor did it open new jobs. Later, this scheme was used by scammers using data from other small businesses.
