Taking advantage of the health crisis, some crooks have set up short-time working frauds, taking many forms, from identity theft to swelling staff.
According to a provisional assessment, around twenty million euros has not yet been recovered by the services of the State.
About a hundred investigations are still in progress.
One year after the announcement of the first confinement to limit the circulation of Covid-19 in the territory, what results for short-time work fraud?
This system, set up by the government to support businesses facing the health crisis, has been widely used.
Twenty-seven billion euros were distributed, part of which to ... crooks or unscrupulous bosses.
If most of the undue sums have been blocked or recovered, there would be at least twenty million euros left in nature, according to a provisional balance sheet.
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For the judicial police, this represents around a hundred investigations carried out by the territorial services of the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ), by investigators from the Paris judicial police and by those of the GIR (Interministerial research groups).
The procedures were triggered by anomalies or reports made by the services of the Direccte (business, competition, consumption, labor and employment departments) or by Tracfin, an organization attached to the Ministry of the Economy and Finance responsible for the fight against tax fraud, money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Rapid adaptation of fraudsters
These investigations concern several types of fraudsters.
Some are entrepreneurs who have inflated their workforce by declaring ghost employees, others have suddenly reactivated fictitious or dormant companies.
Finally, there are also cases of identity theft of business leaders, very real, whose aid has been misappropriated.
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In all cases, the crooks quickly adapted to the crisis, underlines Commissioner Anne-Sophie Coulbois, head of the Central Office for the Suppression of Major Financial Crime.
"They immediately made use of this new system and its specific characteristics to detect the faults and insert themselves into them in order to benefit from them," she explains.
"There is no morality, they get the most out of it."
Some investigations are already more advanced, with heavyweight fraudsters already in prison.
They await their trial with seizure of their bank accounts, even their car and their accommodation.