Criminal Gang Busted for Targeting Businessmen in Euro Scam and Robbery Scheme

Members of this criminal gang contact businessmen in different regions and offer to sell them sums of money in euros at half price. They managed to defraud a Bank Al Maghrib executive, the owner of a private school and a major businessman from Beni Mellal, reports the daily Assabah.

The businessman filed a complaint in which he "specified that in August last year, he had served breakfast in his general food store in Beni Mellal to a young man who then offered to buy a large quantity of euro bills he possessed". To lure the businessman, the young man indicates that it is a lot of 375 bills of 50 euros and shows him two twenty-euro bills to reassure him.

The merchant quickly checked the authenticity of the two bills in a currency exchange office in the area and concluded a deal with the young man. A few days later, he goes to Sidi Yahya El Gharb to recover the money in the forest of the city. That’s where he is kidnapped and dragged to the back of the forest under the threat of knives, assaulted and then stripped of the money he had in his possession that he was going to exchange.

The criminals used the same modus operandi on three other victims, including a woman in Casablanca whom they robbed of 50,000 dirhams, a Moroccan living abroad and a Bank Al Maghrib executive whom they completely stripped. The investigating judge at the Kénitra Court of Appeal ordered the opening of a thorough investigation into this case.