According to police in France and Belgium, 19 members of gangs who sent fictitious court summonses accusing people of viewing images of sexually abusing children have been apprehended.
Those who received the messages were warned they would face legal action and duped into paying thousands of dollars in fictitious fines.
Police claim that the scam ran for more than two years and resulted in the extortion of at least €3.5 million.
At least one victim committed suicide.
The man had been taken advantage of twice by the con, first being forced to pay 5,978 euros and then another 7,480 euros.
The amount of money taken from victims was frequently higher, sometimes reaching 200,000 euros, according to Colonel Thomas Andreu, head of one of the special French police units.
Col. Andreu stated, "We believed that a single central structure was controlling the fraud.". "However, it ended up being a number of small, unconnected teams. " .
On Monday, one person was detained in Belgium and eighteen were detained in France. All ranged in age from twenty to fifty.
On suspicion of fraud, all but three of the suspects were given court dates.
After the fraud started at the beginning of 2021, the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation. They had 400 complaints about it by June of the following year.
The number of people who were impacted is still unknown, but authorities suspect that six more people who were targeted may have also committed suicide.
The "victims had suffered real distress," according to Commissioner Christophe Durand of the French OCLCTIC anti-cybercrime unit.
The scammers sent the majority of the money they extorted to the Ivory Coast and other African nations, though they did spend some of it in France.
