More than 72,000 victims and millions of flights euros: an extraordinary trial was inaugurated this Monday, June 16 in Lyon, where young computer pirates and small criminals are judged by a massive piracy of interim Adecco data and multiple scams online.
Fourteen accused, from the simple apprentice to small computer engineering, must respond significantly to “fraud in an organized gang” and face up to ten years in prison.
Thousands of victims
Timothée Lhomond, 22, considered the group’s brain, has been the only one in pretrial detention for two and a half years. “I want to change the page, I was immature when I committed these facts,” said the young man in the shy air of the box, dressed in a simple white shirt and jeans.
The debates, which will last two weeks, are broadcast live on a webradio and in two university amphumos for the 362 lawyers, which defend the 5,538 civil parties of this extensive file.
These are individual victims of industrial taxes and other scams on the network, but also banks, insurance companies and public organizations such as the National Housing Agency (Anah) and Caisse des dépôts et consignations (CDC).
“Very organized crooks”
“It is an extraordinary scam committed (…) by very organized criminals,” says Xavier Vahramian, lawyer of the French branch of the Swiss interim employment giant Adecco.
Adecco France, based in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, filed a complaint in November 2022 after realizing that his database had been diverted when several of his temporary workers reported small abnormal direct debit of his accounts.
The survey showed that an inmate of a Besançon agency had delivered 58 times and three months during his access codes to Lhomond who had contacted him under an avatar on social networks, in exchange for a promise of 15,000 euros he never realized.
Millions of temporary workers, apprentices or intermediate candidates were sold in Darknet or were used for scams thanks to false documents manufactured by Timothy Lhomond and open accounts under false identities.
Beyond the financial damage for thousands of people (quantified at this stage at 1.6 million euros), moral damage is immense and “for life”, it underlines some of their lawyers.
“Once sold on the network, nothing can be done,” admits the research director. “You can close a bank account, but you cannot change your name and social security number, it is for life, and this data can be used at any time,” he said.
“Our Russians for us”
The research also shows that computer pirates are not in their first attempt. False requests for subsidies as part of the Maprerenov system, vacation coupons, culture pass, life insurance … multiplied the scams long before attacking Adecco. Even Caisse des Dépôts paid more than 1.9 million euros to false vocational training companies mounted by this network.
Around him, Timothée Lhomond, who began his misdeeds after 17, was a heterogeneous strip, with five or six very young computer pirates never convicted, and criminals for the previous ones.
According to judicial documents, it has “high intellectual capacities”, but is driven by “an addictive escalation” to “computer research.”
“This band is our Russians for us,” analyzes the AFP ME MOUNA Taoufik, lawyer of a couple of victims, including an Adecco employee, who lost more than 20,000 euros, “The Economies of a Life.”
“This is one of the first times that the data has been stolen on this scale in France and are sold in Darknet,” he continues. Usually, Internet criminals in France buy them from Darknet from foreigners, and Russians are the absolute teachers in this area. “
Source: BFM TV
