The request added to the avalanche of calls and emails received by several Ligue 1 football clubs at the start of the new season. A banal bank update, which forces the club to redirect the emoluments of a player on its team to a new bank account, assured Patrick Montiel, presenting himself as the player’s sports agent. A newcomer to the profession, whose identity, reminiscent, by one letter, of that of a famous athletics commentator, should have aroused suspicion.
However, at the beginning of the 2017 season, three football clubs (Angers, Sochaux and Toulouse) of the dozen contacted by the same procedure, lowered their guard and paid the requested salaries (63,586 euros in total), without suspecting that they will thus enrich to a counterfeiter, who will immediately transfer the funds to Bulgaria and Malta.
Verification of the IP addresses associated with bank identity statements leads the police to a strange clue: a company called “Dépannage Maintenance frigorifique”, based in Marseille. When examining the accounts, transactions and telephone exchanges associated with this company, the issue of false agents takes on another dimension. The investigations, carried out under the auspices of the specialized interregional jurisdiction of Nancy, will reveal a fraud system based on the false promise of wonderful investments in diamonds or bitcoins, active between 2016 and 2018, whose damages are estimated at more than 28 million euros .
Kings of scrutiny
The Nancy court would be too narrow to accommodate the more than 800 civil parties – out of a total of more than 1,300 estimated victims – who demand accountability from the twenty-two. accused in this case, called “Red Card”. Precisely in the city’s congress center, the criminal proceedings against this network of criminals, accused in particular of fraud and money laundering within an organized gang, will be held from Monday, October 21 to November 15.
If the sports agent scam precipitated the downfall of criminals, their most established and most profitable system had a dozen Internet sites dedicated to the sale of diamonds as a legal showcase. Of the “tangible assets”of the “safe havens” able to offer “exceptional performance” 6% to 8% annually, these sites boasted, covered in reassuring logos, indicating misleading figures of “25,000 satisfied customers”, “fifteen years of experience” and an activity in “152 countries”.
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