In Marseille, justice must rule this week on a vast fraud, where 15 defendants are on trial for having used real invoices intended to dupe companies, on a large scale.
Since Monday and until Friday evening, the Marseille criminal court is looking into a vast scam with international ramifications, involving 15 defendants, excuse me. This massive fraud involving real invoices, but fictitious suppliers, shook the business world in 2015 and 2016. A look back at a scam against the president which had taken on global proportions.
The crooks had almost everything transit abroad
The scam in question is similar to what is known as the “president scam”, in which crooks impersonate suppliers to have real invoices paid, obviously never honored. Here, the criminals informed the “customers” of a change of bank address and demanded payment of legitimate invoices, by bank transfer.
To trap their victims, the scammers posed as customers to suppliers, thus obtaining information about upcoming invoices. They operated via a call center in Israel and fictitious companies abroad (in Spain for example) to collect the embezzled funds.
The defendants appear in Marseille for organized gang fraud and money laundering. Four key protagonists have been the subject of an arrest warrant since 2022.
17 victim companies and associations have become civil parties
But why Marseille as the location for this trial? This choice is justified by the presence of a Marseille defendant, Emmanuel Fitoussi, known to have worked in the Israeli call center, under an assumed name, “Patrick Montiel” (we do not know if he is a fan of Patrick Montel and Bernard Montiel). For him, Alain Lasserie, Wilfried El Baze and Stéphane Benhamou were in reality the main players in the center.
Among the last three mentioned, the first would have been the mastermind of the scam. The second, the one who recruited people to open ghost companies in other countries to speed up money transfers. And the third was designated as the operator, the one who took care of the false RIB, false addresses and supporting documents. Several other individuals, domiciled in Marseille and suspected of having helped money laundering via their bank accounts, are also in the dock.
The victims of this scam were diverse, ranging from laundries to slaughterhouses, including hotels and even a nursing home. In total, 17 companies and associations from across France have become civil parties in this affair. During an attempted scam, a person posing as the famous “Patrick Montiel” contacted Dassault Aviation and Potez Aéronautique, requesting financial information. Fortunately, these two companies were not fooled, but others were tricked.
Source : France 3
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