Criminal ring ’caused suicides’ and extorted £3m from victims with fake child porn charge emails

Police in France and Belgium said today they had cracked down on a criminal gang that used fake subpoenas accusing people of watching child pornography to extort at least £3 million.

The phishing scam included bogus emails from police, judges or institutions such as Europol threatening victims with prosecution unless they paid a ‘fine’.

The amounts extracted from the victims ranged from less than £4,285 to a maximum of £1,715, Colonel Thomas Andreu, head of one of France’s special police units, told AFP.

Police said one of the victims – who was stabbed twice by the thugs – committed suicide and six others may have also committed suicide.

Police added that they arrested 18 people in France and one in Belgium on Monday in an operation that ordered all but three suspects to appear in court on charges of fraud.

“We thought the fraud was being channeled through one central structure,” Andreu said. ‘However, it turned out to be several small teams that were not linked to each other.’

The scam began in early 2021 and led the cybercrime department of the Paris prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation.

As of June 2022, about 400 complaints about the scam had been filed with authorities.

Commissioner Christophe Durand of France’s OCLCTIC anti-cybercrime unit said the ‘victims had suffered real suffering’.

Some of the money extorted from the men – who averaged around 60 years old – was spent in France, but most of it went to the Ivory Coast and other African countries.

The man who was hit twice was first charged £5,123 before the criminals asked him for a further £6,411.

“He felt powerless and trapped and took his own life,” police said.

The suspects are between 20 and 50 years old.