A gang of suspected crooks has just been dismantled in the Normandy region.
The Le Havre police arrested and placed in custody fourteen people, well known to their service, on Wednesday morning.
These criminals would have scammed men of the Church, all over France, asking for charity.
EUROPE INFO 1
In Normandy, fourteen people suspected of being part of a gang of crooks were arrested by the Le Havre police on Wednesday morning and taken into police custody.
The peculiarity of these criminals is that they attacked only priests, appealing to the charity of these men of the Church.
They were following a perfectly oiled scenario: one of the crooks was posing as a former parishioner, widower and suddenly in need for the deposit of a house or the purchase of a car.
He sometimes provided the number of a false gendarme, an accomplice, to attest to his good faith.
Result: 26 ready, often very old, were fooled, relieved of 150,000 euros in total, spread over different accounts or withdrawn in cash by the crooks.
Scams throughout France
The fourteen arrested suspects were well known to the police.
Some have already been arrested for exactly the same facts, in a previous case where they allegedly defrauded 80 priests, in the same way.
This vast case, closed for two years already, has still not been tried, according to information from Europe 1, leaving the suspects free to act and to sin.
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The criminals are suspected of having attacked priests all over France.
A crackdown was therefore carried out by about forty police officers from Seine-Maritime on Wednesday morning.
During the searches, only a few thousand euros in cash were found by the investigators.