Pretending to be the boss of banks and corporations, Gilbert Chikli convinced employees to hand over large sums of money as part of secret operations.
He then used the identity of a former French defence minster, wearing a silicon mask and make up on Skype calls, to convince wealthy figures to send him millions which he said would be used to rescue hostages held by ISIS.
In the podcast Persona: The French Deception, Evan Ratliff explores how Chikli scammed more than $50 million from the rich until he was finally caught after evading capture for years.
Gilbert Chikli on trial in Kyiv on September 26, 2017. Photo: Sergei Supinsky / AFP
Ratliff tells Jesse Mulligan that Chikli’s first elaborate scam in 2005, called the fake president or fake CEO scam, has since been copied by many others.
“It became a huge scam all around the world. It’s actually worth billions of dollars every year - the amount of money that’s taken through these sort of impersonation scams that are derivative of Gilbert Chikli’s.”
While pretending to be the head of the bank as well as a secret agent, he had called up a French bank branch manager and convinced her she would be part of a secret operation to stop terrorists laundering money to commit attacks, Ratliff says.
“He called her 20, 30, 40 times over the course of 48 hours, made her get a special phone just to talk to him, she couldn’t tell anyone about it.
“Slowly, he unfolded what the plan was which was she would take cash out of the bank, hand it over to an agent in the bathroom of a French café in downtown Paris, they would hand it back to her at a different café with marked bills and then when the terrorist came in to get their money, they would get the marked bills.
“And she waits for it [the money] at the next café, and it never arrives.”
Such a daring scam was unheard of and even the police didn’t believe the manager at first, Ratliff says.
“I’ve met her lawyer actually, I haven’t met her, in part because she was so traumatised by this incident that she never speaks of it, I mean, she lost her job, she ended up homeless for a time and it’s extremely traumatic to be subjected to this sort of scam.”
Those who knew Chikli said he grew up poor in France and wanted to stick it to the big institutions, Ratliff says.
“It wasn’t about getting the money or spending the money or retiring, it was about the feeling he got, the adrenaline, from pulling it off.”
While people had said he’d given money out randomly, he still lived lavishly, Ratliff says.
“He had two yachts, he had a beautiful house with a pool, he was living the high life, partying all the time.”
Chikli moved to Israel perhaps under a common misconception that citizens are not extradited but he was, Ratliff says.
But the French authorities let him out on supervised release after he paid a sum of money, he says.
“He was supposed to stay in an apartment and he just got on a plane and flew back to Israel and then the French seemed to be so embarrassed that they had let this happen that they never came after him again.
“So that’s how he was able to continue being involved allegedly in scams for another 10 years.”
In 2015, a French court convicted Chikli in absentia to seven years in prison for president/CEO scams.
But in 2016, Chikli pulled off another audacious scam, impersonating France’s then-defence minister and requesting money from wealthy figures to supposedly free French hostages as part of a secretive operation.
In video calls with people he duped, he had used a silicone mask and had the background set up like a minister’s office, Ratliff says.
“All these elements, if you imagine your brain oriented around believing it might be him, they work.
“If you or I look at it [the mask] and then we look at a picture of him, we say well I don’t know, the skin is kind of saggy, and I don’t think I’d fall for it, you know, but of course that’s the ease of not being caught up in a scam.”
At least 150 people were contacted and most hung up on him, Ratliff says, but two figures that fell for it were Ismāʿīli Muslim leader Aga Khan and Turkish business magnate İnan Kıraç, who forked out €20 million ($NZ32.8m) and €42m respectively.
Most of Aga Khan’s transfers were frozen but €7.7m disappeared.
Authorities had a hunch he was behind it but spent a long time trying to prove his connection, Ratliff says.
“The way these scams work is that all the numbers trace back to either the fake addresses or the wrong countries. There’s a lot of layers of protection when they’re pulling off these kinds of scams.”
The 54-year-old was arrested in Ukraine in 2017 before being extradited to France and sentenced to 11 years in prison with a fine of €2m.
