Alert over fake police officers after couple lose €3,000 in France

Police in France have warned the public to be vigilant after criminals posing as police officers managed to steal €3,000 from an elderly couple in Normandy.

The incident happened on November 25 at around 19:30 in Rouen (Seine-Maritime, Normandy). Two men wearing police jackets and helmets, and carrying fake ‘professional ID’, knocked on the couple’s door.

They told the couple - aged 94 and 88 - that they were police officers, and that someone had been trying to steal their car. Under this pretext, they lured the couple out into their garden, to show them that their car window had indeed been smashed, and the door opened.

Upon returning inside, one of the owners noticed that their living room window had been opened. The police then pretended to investigate, and asked the couple if they had any valuables, money, or jewellery in the home.

They then discovered that €3,000 worth of cash, plus two passports, had been stolen. The police officers then left, taking another item with them, on the pretext of ‘taking fingerprints’ of the perpetrators.

The couple only realised afterwards that the two officers had lured them out of their house so that an accomplice could enter their home and steal their valuables in the meantime.

An inquiry into the incident has now been opened, and the public is warned to be alert to any similar ‘house calls’ and deception.

It comes after another incident in Rouen, in which a 96-year-old woman had her handbag stolen from her home, by a man pretending to be a postman, who lured her from her home while he stole the bag.

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