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Two scammers, a web of betrayal, and Europe's fraud of the century
- techwiz137 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- verisimi 3y ago[flagged]
- throwup238 3y ago> I should say here that Gustav Daphne is a pseudonym. He remains a wanted man in France, so when I traveled to meet with him at his gated villa in Tel Aviv, he agreed to speak on the condition that I not use his name—any of his names. This caught my attention and I decided to do some sleuthing to see how hard it would be to figure out the real name and... there's dozens of people that might fit the description [1]. The cynic in me notes that they all seem to have dogs that the journalist just has to write, I guess as some sort of PR technique via emotional hook. > He made contacts and built extensive networks of people willing to help him import and export fake goods, and he traveled around the world despite the risk it carried. Took quite a turn towards the end. He didn't turn over a new leaf, at all. [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/06/03/the-bittersweet-exile-of-carbon-swindler-millionaires-convicted-in-france-and-stuck-in-israel_6028980_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/06/03/t... (https://archive.ph/yG1dN https://archive.ph/yG1dN)
- tromp 3y agoAccording to [1], > In 2008 and 2009, multiple groups of fraudsters took advantage of differing tax rules in different EU countries to buy and sell carbon credits, or permission to emit carbon dioxide, on exchanges in Europe. The scammers would buy the credits in a country with no value-added tax, and quickly sell them in France or other countries that did charge VAT. > Stephane Alzraa, 38, was extradited from Israel following a request by French authorities. > Aknin remains in Israel, where he is fighting extradition This 39 year old Michael Aknin seems to fit the story... [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/trial-starts-for-franco-israeli-man-accused-in-carbon-credits-scam/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/trial-starts-for-franco-israel...
- canadiantim 3y agoIs that fraud or just arbitrage?
- throw_m239339 3y ago> Is that fraud or just arbitrage? It's VAT fraud, so literally tax fraud.
- ysofunny 3y ago[flagged]
- reactordev 3y agoYeah. Loopholes are usually filled with the bodies of those that abused it to the point of being paved over. So even if Chad was winning, he lost, and the ability to play will be removed.
- throw_m239339 3y agoThe article spends at least 4 paragraphs explaining how the scheme works, did you read it? There is no loophole, since what they did was illegal to begin with and they knew it, it's a very basic and common scheme, it's VAT fraud and that type of fraud has existed since VAT exists.
- Recursing 3y agoReminds me of: https://xkcd.com/1494/ https://xkcd.com/1494/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bsder 3y agoIf you read the article, it's fraud. They ran the exact same fraud as had been run on cell phones. > Criminals imported phones from other EU countries, sold them to consumers with VAT tacked on, pocketed the tax, and disappeared before anyone was the wiser. Or they used carousel schemes, pretending to sell phones through a chain of businesses created for the express purpose of fraud and requesting VAT reimbursements from governments at each point of sale.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dantondwa 3y agoFunny that he is now into… cryptocurrencies. The man has experience with bogus markets.
- octopusRex 3y agoSo when does Netflix make a limited series based on this.
- burningChrome 3y agoI think they already did in 2021 called "Lords of Scam".
- smcin 3y ago"Lords of Scam" (2021) Original title: "Les rois de l'arnaque" | 1h 45m | Documentary https://www.netflix.com/title/81092697# https://www.netflix.com/title/81092697# https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15711402/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15711402/
- Atxgirl1415 3y agoWow.. that is so crazy. Thank you for the good read
- contingencies 3y ago[flagged]
- Scoundreller 3y ago> The way the system was supposed to work was simple enough: The EU would set an annual cap on its overall emissions, then issue various emitters a certain number of EU allowances. Each EUA would entitle its holder to emit one ton of carbon. I'm a serial pirate and I'll only do worse next year. Can you pay me to pirate a bit less next year, while giving nothing to those that never pirated at all?
- Swenrekcah 3y agoIt’s not really comparable because the pollution was being generated as a byproduct of a presumably useful service or industry. This puts polluters under a regulatory limit that didn’t exist before, gives the time to adjust while also providing an early incentive to decarbonise sooner rather than later (they can sell the credits they didn’t need to use).
- thworp 3y agoYes that is totally comparable. After all, those emitters didn't do anything of use to anyone. It's especially bad when you consider that there countries that have successfully prevented this industrial crime: Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Laos...
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoYou forgot China and the US. Now your list is not that impressive, is it?
- mellutussa 3y agoI'd love to listen to a podcast about this. When I saw "fraud of the century" I thought it was the OneCoin scam (Ruja Ignatova, "The Crypto Queen"). BBC did a very detailed investigative podcast about that one: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/uj5nz-a0b8a/The-Missing-Cryptoqueen-Podcast https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/uj5nz-a0b8a/The-Missi...
- GauntletWizard 3y agoI was thinking of Wirecard. There's an awful lot of centry-level financial fraud going around right now. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/how-the-biggest-fraud-in-german-history-unravelled https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/how-the-bigges...
- robocat 3y agoWirecard was €1.9 billion. The cum-ex trading scandal siphoned up to €55 billion. My lawyer went to school with one of the major guys involved. https://theconversation.com/the-robbery-of-the-century-the-cum-ex-trading-scandal-124417 https://theconversation.com/the-robbery-of-the-century-the-c...
- GauntletWizard 3y agoWirecard's max market cap was $27 billion, which puts it in the ballpark of Enron, which was itself a scale of the century. That is of course an inflated value, both by market cap being inflated, and inflation having occurred between the two events, but wirecard card is worth mentioning - when it broke, who could have imagined that we would have three or four more of these?
- robocat 3y agoComparing Market cap to fraud amounts isn't really sensible. The €55 billion was income and you shouldn't usually compare income to market capitalisation. Unless you are comparing against NAV fraud (which is made up numbers so NAV fraud is _somewhat_ meaningless!)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- newprint 3y agoLike FTX/SBF, this person would have probably become an accomplished businessman, if his criminal mind wasn't in his way. Fascinating to read how crafty those people in exploiting any gaps where potential profits could be made. They are like is financial "hackers" that can segfault some .org.
- mkoryak 3y agoLike SBF?
- newprint 3y agoyes, you are right !
- robocat 3y ago> criminal mind Good white-hat hacking (tax|legal|financial|computer) also requires a criminal mind I believe!!! Bending or twisting rules and knowing which rules to break! Criminality is dependent on your context. Risk/reward is a key feature of economics. My personal word for a drug-dealer is entrepreneur.
- jongjong 3y agoPeople who say this usually come from a place of privilege. They profoundly misunderstand how the world works and the significant role of luck. If these people hadn't cheated, they would be broke and struggling to make ends meet. I never met anyone in my life who made any serious money without some kind of cheating or fraud or unethical conduct either by them or their ancestors.
- newprint 3y ago>I never met anyone in my life who made any serious money without some kind of cheating or fraud or unethical conduct either by them or their ancestors. You have picked a wrong crowd. That is on you. Go talk to surgeons, doctors, pharma researchers - very decent people, who made/make serious money.
- bsaul 3y agoNetflix has a great documentary about this story. The french name is « les rois de l’arnaque ».
- me_bx 3y agoA mini-series was also recently released: Of Money and Blood. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzlimhCdkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzlimhCdkA
- sambf 3y agoBased on Fabrice Arfi's book of the same name. He works at Mediapart, a french journal that outed many state scandals. He's also one of the four french members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
- casefields 3y agoLords of Scam is the English title.
- personjerry 3y ago> He bought her a Bugatti in green, like her eyes. > The problem was that he lacked capital. He needed more than the 80,000 euros he’d received from El Ghazouani. A Bugatti is like a few million dollars no? This discrepancy doesn't make sense to me, if he already had the money on that scale why did a few hundred thousand euros of investment matter so desperately?
- Foobar8568 3y agoLombard credit on fake accounting?
- LeonM 3y ago> A Bugatti is like a few million dollars no? Back then when they were new it was more like 800k. But yeah, this part stood out for me as well. My guess is he either financed the car, or didn't pay for it at all (just have it repo'd, you'd still have impressed the girl). Or the whole story is fake, you never know with these kind of serial scammers, their whole life is a lie.
- Beretta_Vexee 3y agoI don't know if it's available outside France. But Netflix has made a documentary in french about Marco Mouly "Les Rois de l'arnaque" / "Kings of the scam". The least we can say is that he's a real piece of work. Most of the people involved are such caricatures of sephard that you wouldn't put them in a work of fiction. The man is a clown, boasts, lies, but at some point you can also see the fear in his eyes when his daughter is 15 minutes late because he fears for the lives of his loved ones. It's really the story of a couple of small-time VAT fraudsters from a poor Parisian suburb who stumbled onto something way too big for them and got caught out by some real gangsters.
- helsinkiandrew 3y agohttps://www.netflix.com/title/81092697 https://www.netflix.com/title/81092697 Available in 33 countries: https://unogs.com/movie/81092697/lords-of-scam https://unogs.com/movie/81092697/lords-of-scam
- malshe 3y agoThanks for the Netflix link. I tried to read the story in earnest but couldn't understand the mechanics of the scam well. Probably the documentary will explain it more.
- rokkitmensch 3y agoWhat, praytell, is a caricature of a sephard?
- the-chitmonger 3y agoQuick google search brings up a subset of Spanish Jewish population. Not sure if this was a typo or if it's a very specific regional slur?
- rokkitmensch 3y agoI (a Jew) generally abhor the ADL and friends' behavior in public, but in this case I hope strongly for a typo. Figuring the best approach is to offer the poster the chance to present something plausible.
- bigbacaloa 3y ago[dead]
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y agoThis was a fascinating and well-written read. Thanks for submitting it!
- jamesjay4455 3y ago[dead]