A pregnant woman and mother of 3 cheated no less than 63 parents by selling them childcare items. In fact, she collected € 2,425 in all, without ever sending any parcel. Guarantor of 38 complaints, the accused does not seem to feel any remorse.
Scams and purchases without receiving a package are more or less frequent on resale platforms like leboncoin, or the Facebook marketplace. Difficult to ensure the reliability of sellers. Despite this, our sense of morality more often than not takes precedence over reason and we decide to trust people on the other side of the screen. The truth is, we tell ourselves that they wouldn't dare collect the money and send nothing! And yet …
It's a scam worth € 2,425 that is shaking the news. A pregnant woman, already a mother of 3 children, defrauded 63 parents by cashing in their money for childcare items, but never sending them. A case qualified as “unpleasant”By the prosecutor in charge of the case, but also extremely selfish.
A well-orchestrated scam
The woman must first answer for 14 scams collected via Facebook and Leboncoin. She sold a baby carrier, set the price between € 55 and € 90, and cashed in the money without ever sending the item to her buyers. It seems that the mother trapped the different parents, coming from all over the hexagon, between December 2018 and December 2019.
The mother sometimes gave a different identity, but it was her bank details that betrayed her, and that allowed investigators to arrest her.
The accused admitted only one fact. But today there are no less than 38 complaints. According to the president of the tribunal, “the reality would rather be around 63 possible victims ”. A crazy number.
The mother always used the same procedure.
An accused who does not regret anything
The mother of the family explains the reasons for her gesture without the slightest regret: “We were in trouble, without money”. In response, the prosecutor tells him: “Many mothers are in the same financial situation as you, you have also put them in difficulty". In addition to a 6-month prison sentence with a 24-month probationary suspension involving work obligation, the accused will have to compensate the victims to whom she will pay € 1,261.
Some victims had registered on a forum in order to discuss with each other this scam of which they had been victims. In this group, there was a certain Marjorie Delarue, who sympathized and who urged the victims not to file a complaint, because “it would be useless”. Marjorie was none other than the accused herself.
Where can I find second-hand childcare items in complete safety?
It's not necessarily the platforms that matter, but the sellers. You can just as easily get cheated on Leboncoin, Facebook as on Vinted. What you need to do is make sure the seller is reliable by:
- Checking his account data : there must be enough of them, their rating must be high and their comments sufficient and positive.
- Talk to the seller : talk to him and ask him for information, or other photos of the product, why not call him …
- Check the date the product was put online : If it's very old, it might be strange.