Three and a half years after the first facts, the trial of the largest partial unemployment fraud network opens, Thursday, October 12, before the thirteenth chamber of the Paris Criminal Court. An extremely short deadline given the complexity of the case and the usual legal delays.
A man, Dan J., appears for organized gang fraud, attempted fraud and criminal association. Justice accuses him of having diverted 11 million euros from the aid system put in place in March 2020 for companies in difficulty during the Covid-19 epidemic, which made it possible to finance part of the salaries of forced employees. to stop work during confinement.
At the time, the government decided to help companies in difficulty “whatever it costs” ; the tap of public money is wide open. A boon for scammers who “ carry out legislative and regulatory monitoring of State financial aid schemes, explains Nicolas Barret, head of the financial crime section of the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco) within the Paris public prosecutor’s office. Operating methods are tested on the new devices and if a technique results in recovering funds, there is immediately an industrialization of the process to divert as much money as quickly as possible. »
Especially since for partial unemployment, the government had decided to limit the processing of applications for benefits to 48 hours. At the end of this period, the files were therefore automatically accepted, without any control. a priori. All that remained was a declaration system where anyone could submit requests on behalf of dozens of ghost employees.
Millions of euros gone abroad
This is how the network to which Dan J. is suspected of belonging rushed into this gaping loophole, by sending 3,882 payment requests on behalf of companies created for the occasion or by usurping the identity of existing businesses (plumber, electrician, etc.). The bank details provided for the payment corresponded to Lithuanian neobanks or to accounts opened in French banks by accomplices for remuneration. “They cast a wide net and drowned the paying agency in the hope that certain files would passdescribes a source close to the case. As with phone scams or email phishing campaigns. »
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