Twelve individuals were arrested in France and Belgium last week as authorities dismantled an international network of scammers involved in rip deal schemes targeting luxury watches and gold bars.
Following investigations launched in July 2024 after the theft of a watch in Bordeaux, France, French authorities unraveled a “highly sophisticated organisation” operating within the Serbo-Croatian community in Seine-Saint-Denis and Belgium, with the aim of deceitfully acquiring valuable goods.
The fraudsters posed as experts to inspect high-value items during a transaction, before stealing them and leaving behind weighted decoys, according to investigators.
Victims were identified through online or print advertisements. They were then approached and persuaded with fabricated stories. The perpetrators, often using false foreign identities, depicted themselves as wealthy buyers interested in obtaining goods for “expert evaluation,” the Bordeaux Prosecutor’s Office explained in a statement.
During such a transaction in the city of Tours on 14 May, officers from Bordeaux’s Organised and Specialised Crime Division, the Central Office for Combatting Major Financial Crime, and Research and Intervention Brigades arrested a fake expert leaving a hotel after stealing two gold bars, along with his driver.
Following this, five suspects were apprehended in Seine-Saint-Denis and two in Chaumont, Haute-Marne, along with three in Belgium, who are expected to be extradited to France shortly, the prosecutor specified.
The nine people arrested in France – eight men and one woman born between 1974 and 2000 – have been charged by a judge from the Interregional Specialised Jurisdiction of Bordeaux and placed in provisional detention.
Numerous computers, phones, documents used to impersonate managers of foreign investment firms, cash amounts, and Rolex and Cartier watches were seized.
The value of the seized items topped €160,000.
