INFO THE DEPACHING. Toulouse: a fake temp agency suspected of a scam exceeding one million euros
More than thirty young waiters, cooks and divers from Haute-Garonne have been scammed. They worked for a temporary agency specializing in catering but never received their wages. The amount of the scam would exceed 1.5M €.
It was a revolutionary solution. One way to compensate for the many last minute cancellations. By joining the human resources employer association (AGERH), restaurant and hotel managers have been able to benefit from a qualified workforce, available within half an hour. An offer that is too enticing to be true. This vast scam affected more than 30 servers, cooks and divers in Haute-Garonne, never paid by AGERH. Between the CPAM, Urssaf and unpaid salaries, the loss of the swindle is close to 1.5M €, just for the department of Haute-Garonne.
Between 2019 and 2020, a sixty-year-old who officiated under the name of “M.Kléber”, among a plethora of false identities, approached the bistros and hotels of Haute-Garonne to offer his innovative concept. AGERH operated as an interim agency. Workers were trained, paid and paid by this organization. In return, members only had to pay a lump sum contribution to Mr Kléber. In Haute-Garonne, three restaurants and an nursing home have called on his services.
Already sentenced to six years in prison in 2018
If the brands that have trusted this association have rarely been disappointed, the feeling is very different for employees, all young or undocumented. These temporary workers, who were promised salaries between € 1,500 and € 2,000, never realized that they were not receiving the amount promised by Mr Kléber and his accomplices. “I got to know this structure through a friend who had just signed there. I knew I was going to work hard, but it must have provided me with a good income, around 1600 € net. The first month, you win at pretty much what we told you. But the next month, the salary melts like snow in the sun. an administrative error, which it will be corrected the following month. A lie “, testifies Joséphine (1), one of the victims recorded in the Pink City. Like this student, they are at least thirty to have suffered the scam linked by Me Kleber and his wife in the department of Haute-Garonne. After the complaints lodged, the gendarmes of the Cell for the fight against illegal work and fraud (CELTIF) and state bodies looked at the profile of this sixty-year-old. First surprise, he was already sentenced in Bourges in 2018 to six years in prison following a similar case in the construction industry. An audience he never showed up to. Then, the Urssaf also noticed that AGERH had never honored its contributions.
Nice and Perpignan also targeted
The scam would actually be much more important since its process had already been repeated in Nice in the summer of 2019 and in Perpignan in 2020, after having suddenly left Toulouse. “They set up empty-shell companies and change Siret’s number every three months. Once they are spotted, they leave and repeat the model elsewhere. More than a thousand victims are recorded throughout France” , confides a former of his associates, now repentant … Faced with the scale of the phenomenon, the Toulouse public prosecutor’s office relinquished jurisdiction in favor of the specialized interregional jurisdiction (JIRS) of Bordeaux. Investigations are ongoing