Israeli justice minister yesterday announced that it indicted four French immigrants for running an international scam network based in Tel Aviv, the Huffington Post reported AFP.
The ministry published documents showing that the members of the network had impersonated company executives and cost five famous European companies €9.11 million.
German electronics retailer MediaMarket was among the companies which fell victim to the scan along with Belgian electronics company Eldi, European supermarket chain Cora, multinational perfume chain ICI Paris XL and Dutch hardware store owner Intergamma.
According to the documents, the scam activities mainly concentrated on sport and football.
In addition, the hustlers attempted to deceive the South Korean car company KIA, as well as the EuroSport TV network.
Scammers created fake email addresses for company employees and sent forged documents to the finance departments of the companies requesting money to be sent to a new “clearing firm”, which were the defendants’ accounts.
In the biggest single scam, AP reported, the defendants, allegedly impersonated an employee of Chanel, convinced ICI Paris XL to transfer nearly 5.5 million euros to an account at a Slovakian branch of the Bulgarian bank UniCredit Bulbank.
Four French defendants were indicted in the case along with two Italians.