the crazy story of a fraud from father to son

This is an extraordinary case that has been shaking up the courts since March. The Gosse family and eighteen other suspects were at the head of a well-crafted scam for several decades. The victims: around sixty Catholic priests, all over the age of 69. At the Le Havre judicial court, Kevin Gosse, 35, the mastermind of the scam, was due to appear this Thursday.

In prison since 2019 and already sentenced in 2021 for similar acts repeated several times, notably from his cell at the Val-de-Reuil detention center (Eure). According to the police, between 2020 and 2024, the suspect called priests from all over France, using phones and SIM cards delivered to prison to steal money from them. The latter posed as a gendarme, a police officer, a magistrate or even a person married by the priest contacted. Once trust was gained, Kevin Gosse obtained the victims' bank codes. He explained to them that scammers were preparing to empty their accounts and that they had to act quickly. Accomplices outside the prison were then responsible for making transfers to dedicated accounts and then withdrawing the money to spend it better.

“We went back to about three years ago, when he entered the remand center. The accused is familiar with the facts because he has adopted his own father's modus operandi.“, explains Julien Herbaud, commissioner of Le Havre, at the microphone of France 3 Normandie. A scam therefore inspired by that orchestrated by Michel Gosse, the father of the suspect, and already sentenced to prison.

Scammers from father to son

Between 1979 and the 1990s, the latter used the same method to extract tens of thousands of euros from priests. By abusing “their Christian charity “, he had money sent under the pretext of being a former parishioner whom the victim had married. He assured them that he had become a widower, homeless and riddled with debt.

Michel Gosse explained that he was a victim of sexual abuse by a priest as a child and explains:It's better to be a priest who fucks kids than a kid who fucks priests“. Vengeful motive for the scams, he concluded at the time. The trial is postponed until September 2024 due to a strike by prison officers.