A British imposter known from a documentary on the Netflix streaming service is on the run in France.
The man is said to have seriously injured two police officers on Friday when he tried to avoid a check.
According to the mayor of the municipality of Vidaillat, the alleged perpetrator is the convicted serial scammer Robert Hendy-Freegard, who has lived in the village in the sparsely populated Creuse department in central France since 2015.
According to the authorities, labor inspectors, accompanied by police officers, checked the dog breeding business that Hendy-Freegard runs with his partner on Thursday.
According to the police, one of the two should accompany the officers to the next station, according to a statement from the prefecture of the department.
But the man started his car and hit two officers before fleeing.
Accordingly, the two police officers were seriously injured, one of them had to be taken to the hospital on Thursday.
Hendy-Freegard, 51, was sentenced to life imprisonment in London in 2005 for fraud, theft and kidnapping.
He had charmed his victims and then exploited them mercilessly.
Because of his ability to manipulate people, he was nicknamed "the Puppeteer".
However, the kidnapping conviction against him was later overturned on appeal and Hendy-Freegard was released from prison in 2009.
Earlier this year, the US streaming service published the documentary series "The Puppeteer: On the hunt for the ultimate imposter" about him.