‘Fake police’ steal €200,000 of jewellery from Paris retirees

Brazen thieves duped an elderly Paris couple into letting them into their apartment, where they then made an easy heist.

Published: 19 February 2016 10:54 CET

'Fake police' steal €200,000 of jewellery from Paris retirees

File pic. Photo: Naomi King/Flickr

The crime took place on Wednesday afternoon, when the couple were approached in the car park of their building, in the wealthy 16th arrondissement of Paris.

France Info reported that the criminals had managed to get hold of realistic police uniforms, and tricked the retired couple by telling them their apartment had been broken into. What the pensioners didn't realize was that the real burglary was about to take place.

In their panicked state of mind, the couple opened their apartment to let the ‘police’ assess the robbery, telling them where their jewellery and other valuables were kept.

By the time the pair had realized what was happening and had called the real police, the four burglars had fled.

It seems that thieves in France are getting increasingly inventive with their scams; last May, a luxury jewellers' in Cannes was robbed by a man wearing an old-man mask, and in February of the same year a stolen Picasso artwork was found after being sent to the US disguised as a €30 Christmas present.

On Tuesday, a British man was arrested in Mallorca for impersonating a police officer sent to investigate a “top secret case”.

Paris police are dealing with the enquiry.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.