Two men, aged 18 and 21, have been arrested for posing as plumbers to target elderly people in Paris. A third, a minor, is also said to have been involved and is still being actively sought by police.
The trio, which has been identified as French-Arab suspects Faisal K., Reda K. and Ghassan K., are accused of having carried out several burglaries in recent weeks in the Paris region, with police stating that they are still looking into other potential victims. As of now, they are accused of having stolen items worth tens of thousands of euros.
According to Le Parisien, the first incident occurred early in the afternoon on March 21 in an apartment building on Rue Marie-Sorin-Dufresnes in Vitry-sur-Seine. A young man wearing a mask rang the doorbell of an elderly couple’s home, introduced himself as the son of the downstairs neighbors, and said he believed a water leak in their apartment may be coming from this apartment. He added that a plumber from the building’s management company would be coming up shortly.
A few minutes later, the plumber, wearing a cap, a mask, and a leather satchel, appeared. He went into the bathroom while the young man distracted the two occupants. The latter then joined the plumber in the bathroom and emerged with a small cut on his forehead, saying he had sustained the injury while trying to help the plumber.
The couple treated him, then the two men left, announcing that the leak had been repaired. Once alone, the elderly woman discovered that her jewelry boxes — one in her bedroom and the others in the bathroom — had been emptied. The estimated loss was over €30,000.
Once the couple reported this incident, the Val-de-Marne territorial security service began searching for similar incidents. They discovered a virtually identical case committed in Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine) two days later, as well as a similar theft in Saint-Maurice.
A CCTV camera had also allowed them to identify the first young man in the reported incident as a minor wanted for other offenses.
In Montrouge, the victim was an 81-year-old woman who came across the two men rummaging through a cupboard in her apartment and began to scream. The minor then violently struck her twice. A neighbor, alerted by the screams, went into the hallway and came face to face with the two fleeing men. He tried to stop them, grabbing one of them around the waist, but the fake plumber pulled out a knife, forcing him to let the thief go.
The victim in this incident estimates her loss due to goods stolen at €10,000.
Yet again, another elderly woman was targeted in the same way inside her apartment on March 27 in Bonneuil-sur-Marne.
