"Damn. These guys are robbing the place. It's affecting everyone."

We've read and enjoyed Les Caméléons, the investigation into the fake bank adviser scam. The book is already out of stock on Amazon, just one week after its release. And that's to be expected, because it's a real page turner, well written and well researched. It's also a chilling investigation because it reveals a little-known and little-shown part of the behind-the-scenes world of phone-spoofing, banking, telephone operators and KYC. 

The law - and its representatives - on the other hand, appear motivated and embodied, simply overwhelmed from the outset, because of their limited resources in relation to the scale of the fraud, and the precautions they have to take to hit hard and effectively.

To convince you to read all 250 pages, here are a few extracts from Thibaut Martinez-Delcayrou's book, published by Flammarion. And perhaps ask yourself three questions, depending on who you are and what you do. The ones that came to mind at the end of a memorable reading experience. Who, when, how many ?

Good to know 
Me Sylvie Noachovitch and Arnaud Delomel (located in Paris and Rennes)  are two of the rare french lawyers who has helped french victims to be reimbursed by their bank (BNP-Paribas). Read here.  

The "fake advisor" scam consists of calling the victim to "help" them stop alleged fraud on their account and asking them to approve transactions or asking them for their login details and then carrying out transactions from their personal account. A new variant involves sending a courier to the victim's home to collect a supposedly faulty bank card. AMF warning, in December 2024. 

A must-read book as thrilling as Stephen King, Jean-Patrick Manchette or Iain Levison.
Who plays the role of Marine Fontange ?

Marine Fontange is a young and tenacious examining magistrate. After spending six years at the financial division, one evening she is assigned to the DSK case. Because Dominique Strauss-Kahn, like many other Frenchmen, was also involved in a fake bank adviser scam. As an American Express customer, the former minister was relieved of €8,950. However, unlike many other victims, he will be reimbursed by his bank. All banks were involved, including the Caisse d'Epargne, the bank of the author, who was also the victim of a damn good “telemarketer” on a match night.

In my pocket, my phone vibrates. It's the Caisse d'Epargne. Mr Martinez-Delcayrou. I hate my bank (...) How many times have I lost my nerve in the afternoon when my banker's answering machine told me that I'd have to call back in the morning to have the privilege of speaking to her directly. Understand, you have the right to have an emergency, but only between 9am and midday.

This time it's different. The call is coming from much higher up.

Sorry to disturb you, Dominique Bertrand, from the Caisse d'Epargne fraud department (...) Is it really you who initiated the transfer of the sums of €1,400 and €850 from your account a few minutes ago?

When did it happen? Over a million victims in France. Over a billion looted.
When will this affect you? The Chameleons is a breathless thriller about a gigantic modern-day scam: more than a million French people have been affected and the loot is said to be in excess of a billion euros. Every day, each Paris police station registers between one and ten complaints. And 2025 looks set to be even worse.

The author of the book spent more than a year investigating at the heart of the PJ and lawyers' offices, and met examining magistrates, Oscar, the BFMP police officer, and MP Christophe Naegelen, during the implementation of MAN, the number authentication mechanism, which was supposed to enable action to be taken against fraud. Was. Based on STIR/SHAKEN technology, MAN was supposed to deal a fatal blow to spoofing fraud. "It won't. The crooks realised that all they had to do to fool the French was to use a foreign telephone operator. The scammers tell me that they use the following operators: Plivo and Flowroute".

Breathless and perfectly documented, the investigation takes the reader into the mysteries of call centres dedicated to KYC, the justice system and the police, whose efficiency and speed we discover, although their resources appear disproportionate compared to the agility of the bandits. One of the features of the book is that the young journalist who wrote it, an ex-Canal + contributor, is not a fan of circumlocutions. He names things, the protagonists, and manages to :

-to share the compassion that some victims, such as Lou, arouse. The story of Lou, a student whose bank account has been siphoned off and whose father calls her a stupid cunt, demonstrates the social utility of the book.

-It's also about making us smile. Like when we hear what Rayan, one of the gang, has to say at his trial. Rayan, future telemarketer, sedentary salesman?

-What do you envisage for your future career?

-I know how to use my words to sell something. Opposite them, the lawyers for the civil parties are laughing their heads off. Without knowing that the worst part of this scam is yet to come.

When he explains what KYC (Know Your Customer) is, he relies on an expert, Fily Kanté. When he explains how money is recycled, the reader is invited on a Parisian shopping trip, to Le Bon Marché, Louis Vuitton, Hermès.

Chanel, Cartier, Burberry, gift cards to Galeries Lafayette, eight Jacquemus bags for 5,400 euros: the list of daily purchases made by the crooks and their accomplices shows how the stolen money is spent, and what kind of trafficking is organised. Morgane specialises in buying gift cards at Galeries Lafayette. Any bogus identity is enough to obtain one and cover up the origin of the purchase.

It all begins in 2020, in a Paris flat where eight childhood friends obtain and buy millions of bank details and manage to empty their victims' accounts with a simple phone call. The banks' KYC, often outsourced to Madagascar because it's cheaper, is incomplete, whether it's done by Concentrix or IDnow.

Extracts

Page 31. Emmanuel B, Porte d'Orléans. 
Emmanuel B. was born at the end of 1999. He is of West Indian origin, of mixed race, with plaits à la Travis Scott. He lives with his little brother and his mother in a modest flat in the 14th arrondissement. Not the one with the Gaîté bars, or the part that borders Montparnasse. No. The other one. The one at Porte d'Orléans; a neighbourhood within a neighbourhood, which the kids here call ‘the arse end of Paris’. The last few metres inside the city before the ring road.
He lives in a duplex apartment that his mother pays for every month with her salary as a care assistant. There are two bedrooms upstairs: his mother's and his own, which he shares with his brother. One wardrobe for two. A bunk bed. Loose shoes, notebooks and a games console. On the ground floor, there's the kitchen and sheets, sheets everywhere, folded in every nook and cranny under crumpled clothes that his mother will iron when she has time, maybe between 5 and 6 in the morning, before she leaves for work.

Page 49-50. BNP, N26, KYC incomplete or outsourced to Madagascar.
European data processed in Madagascar
Fily Kanté left Paris a few months ago to settle in the sunshine. We walk a few metres and sit down at the first table without neighbours. Fily is one of France's leading experts in document verification and identity theft.
He set up his own company, ID Protect. Before going independent, he worked for BNP in 2019. ‘They hired me when they wanted to strengthen their security a few months after being convicted of inadequacies in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.’

Fily only worked at BNP for three months to see and understand its auditing process. "It was in Nanterre, on a floor of three hundred people. He saw documents go by all day long and had to check their authenticity using tools and his phone to make calls to the people concerned. "It's the most boring job in the world. I hated it. The people around me weren't necessarily qualified in this field. What's more, almost all of them were in precarious situations.
Paid the minimum wage, or little more. But within the law.
That year, BNP saw competitors springing up all over the place: the neobanks were booming. They were winning over the whole continent thanks to the flexibility of European law: a neobank did not need to set up shop in a particular country in order to attract customers. Revolut, for example, obtained its banking licence in Lithuania in 2019. In 2024, it celebrated its four million customers in France. "When they launch, neo-banks have investors to whom they have to show that they are opening more and more accounts. Opening an account has to be quick. So what they do is outsource their identity verification to external service providers".

The market leaders are Onfido, IDnow and Concentrix. "The service providers are playing this game with the new banks. They tell them: give us this low value-added, boring task and we'll take care of it. But where? Certainly not in France, where labour is too expensive.
IDnow has opened centres in Romania. Concentrix in Madagascar (...)

Page 97-98. How do you open bogus accounts on Boursorama or Fortuneo?
He tells her that she too could make money very simply, by opening an account with Boursorama or Fortuneo. That's all there is to it. She would earn a percentage that would multiply her baker's salary by five or six. Kenza refuses and asks him to promise that he'll get out of it and never see these guys again. But it was too late.
Bavon is hooked on dopamine. He's got a role, lots of money and mates. That's how he finds himself turning up in a Snoopy T-shirt at the Rochester. Bavon has good news. Today he arrives with nine Boursorama accounts, opened by two young people who must have been trying their hand. They will each receive just 100 euros.

Ulysse and Rayan can hear him, but they are concentrating on other things. To multiply their profits, they buy pairs of Balenciaga shoes. To sell them, you have to buy them tenfold," says Rayan. Wait until you can cash in. They're aiming for a rare model, the Track 2 at €700 a pair.
They'll sell it all to a man called Bilal, who runs a small shop that exploded in popularity over the summer after receiving visits from Ninho and Gradur, two well-known French rappers (...)

Page 144-145. Arnaud Delomel, Sylvie Noachovitch, when lawyers are tenacious.
Since appearing in Envoyé spécial on France 2 in February 2024, lawyer Arnaud Delomel has received between five and ten new cases every day from victims of bogus bank advisers. He told me in January 2025: "You'd think that this ruling by the Court of Cassation would change things. But the banks know that the majority of victims will not take costly legal action. So they keep telling them that they won't reimburse them.
The banks were even backed up by... the Court of Cassation on 15 January 2025. Prior to this date, some customers were able to get their money back by claiming that their bank had been less than vigilant in authorising a money transfer that it should have considered dubious. For example, in January 2023, BRED was ordered to reimburse 50% of the losses suffered by customers who had been victims of phishing because it had failed in its duty of supervision by validating a money transfer. But on 15 January 2025, the Court of Cassation issued a ruling saying that, if the bank could prove gross negligence on the part of the customer, it could refuse reimbursement.
In three months, the Court of Cassation has blown hot and cold.
Between the banks' refusal to reimburse them and the complexity of the legal procedures, victims find themselves discouraged from bearing the burden of their loss alone, with no real (...)

A film, a series, when?
A real page turner, Thibaut Martinez-Delcayrou's book on fake bank adviser scams can be read in one go. It will undoubtedly inspire a series or film. So, Netflix or Canal +, which scored big last year with Air Cocaine?

How much do you want?
If I were head of rights acquisition at France TV or Mediawan (Chi-Fou-Mi productions), I'd cancel all my appointments for the day. I'd head for the first bookshop I knew near me. And, once I'd finished reading all 250 pages, I'd make a phone call, and not with a masked number. To Flammarion. To ask just one question: how much?

Actually, no, I would do that as soon as I reached page 81. The first 80 would have been enough for me. Back from the luxury Parisian hotels where they've set up their boiler room, Emmanuel B's gang drop in on them during the day to reassure their mothers.

And then they vanish into thin air to dirty the sheets at the Warwick, the Park Lane and the Rochester (...) Now we have to beat them up, say Fred and Alex, the investigators.

The book was published on 14 May. It is available from Fnac.com, where it is not out of stock. 21 euros.

boiler room: in call centre slang, the place where telemarketers work and make phone calls all day. Read more here.

Manuel Jacquinet.