The Masked Scammer (Le Masque)

Hello?

Yes, your Highness, how are you?

Yes, hello.

You know, I'm calling you on a secure line.

He had an extremely calm, controlled and friendly voice.

So I've just sent you a very confidential document.

CONFIDENTIAL-THE MINISTER

The Minister Le Drian wants to organize a video conference.

I see on the screen Mister Le Drian in front of me.

I don't know if it's real or not.

The minister tells me: "I need a lot of money."

4.8 million.

You have received a payment order of 886,000 euros.

I think it's between three or four hundred thousand euros, not more.

5.8 million.

It's very important you pay it immediately.

An incredible scam that managed to extort more than 80 million euros.

The alleged mastermind of these operations,

Gilbert Chikli, the King of Scams.

He's got something in his voice that brings people on board.

It's like for great actors, great artists.

Either it works or it doesn't.

His latest achievement… impersonating…

Jean-Yves Le Drian.

The extraordinary audacity of attempting everything.

It becomes art, not fraud.

Theatre.

So, let me introduce myself. My name is Gilbert Chikli.

I don’t think I’m mean or a bad boy,

but in the end, it will be for others to judge

because Gilbert Chikli isn’t the person you think he is.

I was born in Paris, in a little village called Belleville.

At the time, we lived in a very tiny room.

Financially we had nothing, absolutely nothing,

and I could not accept it.

I was a very clever boy with an obsession,

which was to try to alleviate my family’s suffering.

In this world, there is only room for clever people.

Can you move the chair a bit to your right please? Yeah, no, a bit less.

-Good and… -I look horrible.

What type of person are you Shirley?

It's a mystery.

It's a mystery.

Make me look tanned.

And thin, make me thinner. Otherwise it'll be a catastrophe.

SHIRLEY FORMER FRIEND AND ACCOMPLICE

Money is exciting.

It gives adrenaline, it excites me.

I don't get out of bed unless there's money.

There has to be money everywhere.

Would you say you're a criminal?

Me, a criminal? Not at all.

Oh, on the contrary, I'm an angel. I do good things with money.

So, well… listen.

I live the truth.

Tell me about your relationship with Gilbert.

He gave me this ring when I was 25, well, I still have it.

No, I don't want to show it. I would get jinxed.

In the 90s, I was in Paris,

I worked for an advertising company

doing false advertising.

It was considered to be scamming,

but it didn't bother me much,

because I smooth-talked them over the phone to get money.

I have always hung out with people who make money easily.

When I met Gilbert, I must have been 20 years old.

I was in my car, as usual, I drove,

and in a traffic jam, like everybody else, I look around.

And suddenly I locked eyes with Gilbert Chikli.

And he locked eyes with me.

Ah.

And we immediately hit it off.

He was resourceful and knew how to make money.

I have always lived in luxury, very "well-to-do".

But Gilbert was from Belleville.

That's why it clicked between us. The bourgeoise and the bad boy.

Gilbert has always been a big-time gambler.

He didn't play to win, he played to gamble big-time.

What I loved in him was his intelligence.

In 2005, Gilbert had a money problem.

He had fallen into debt by gambling.

He needed €200,000 to €300,000.

Lots of thugs wanted money from him.

And he told me: "Shirley, I'm fucked, I need money, how will I do this?"

That night, I was at home with him.

I was watching TV.

The underground has been evacuated.

The streets of London are filled with ambulances…

When I saw on TV the terrorist attacks taking place

in London in 2005…

A total of six explosions this morning in the heart of London.

I immediately thought of creating a scam.

Playing on people's fear

and impersonating Counter-terrorism agents.

And it went

like dynamite.

I'm going to tell you a secret.

Human beings are curious.

When faced with a mythical, mysterious person,

they will go all the way.

I never thought for a second that people would believe me.

You know why?

Because the most important thing is that I believed in myself.

Gilbert's role was pretending to be a secret service agent.

Looking for people's weakness is the number one thing to do.

Scaring them, telling them we know a secret about them.

By the way, I know a secret about you.

Yes, I have a secret on you.

We play with the psyche of the people we're scamming.

We managed to find out if they smoke, if they don't smoke,

if they had kids, if they were cheating on their wives.

We managed to enter into their personal lives.

And we got them to get money, a lot of money.

My name is Élise le Guével, I'm a journalist.

I have worked for the TV show Envoyé Spécial on France 2 for seven years.

One night, I was with a friend.

He worked in a major French company,

and he told me: "Something strange happened this morning.

Someone from my department received a call

from someone pretending to be the CEO of the company.

And this CEO told him:

"one of the bank's clients is financing terrorism.

We are going to ask for your help to fight terrorism."

I have been a financial director for many years.

In March 2006,

I went through something that no one should have to experience,

the death of my wife because of depression.

She committed suicide and left me with three children.

It was a difficult time for me,

when I needed to trust, to trust in human nature again.

15 days later, I was at my desk.

At some point, a colleague transferred a call over

and told me: "It's the CEO".

Hello?

It's Mr Roger, how are you doing?

And he tells me that I will get another call

from another DGSE agent.

MASKED NUMBER

I receive that call.

Yes, hello.

You know I'm calling you on a secure line.

He had an extremely calm, controlled and friendly voice.

He told me my contribution will be making a bank transfer

that will be traced by his team to try and catch them

when they receive the funds.

This is an internal crime,

so if you are able to do it,

we'll do it together,

otherwise I'm old enough to contact someone else.

So there shouldn't be any contact between you and me.

You have to make the payment alone.

I'm starting to ask myself questions.

When he felt I was hesitating,

he told me: "We know who you are, we know your personal life

is harsh these days."

He told me about my wife's suicide, he told me about my children.

He knows things about me, a lot of things.

I'm counting on you, send it right now, it's very important.

I'm hesitating.

I'm hesitating but I go all the way, I'm in my role and I do it.

In total, this attempt was for a bit more than 10 million euros.

10 MILLION EUROS

I learned I had this ability to do incredible things.

Clearly, I had the capacity to go much further.

Gilbert, he saw the recipe was making good cakes,

so then he made a whole bakery.

Hello?

-Good, are you in front of your computer? -Yes

You have received a payment order of 886,000 euros.

It was a very exciting job which brought a lot of adrenaline.

I felt like I was living a movie.

I think it's between three or four hundred thousand euros, not more.

Every single French company on the stock market,

the big ones, the small ones, are targeted by these type of calls,

it's on an industrial scale.

I don't understand.

At what time will I receive the bank account details?

You should receive them tomorrow.

Those victims don't necessarily appear gullible, fragile.

They are professional, skillful,

who really want to succeed,

and I think this is what the scammer needs.

So, he had to be found.

How are you?

And you?

Yes, that's why I'm calling you back.

Yes, I was there, I'm calling you back.

When you're young, there's a group leader,

a number one, a number two, a number three.

Gilbert was a number one.

Come on, sit down.

Just a second, the lawyer's just called me.

When he sets his scam up, he wants to take a lot of money.

But why? Because he has a story and he goes all in.

He prepares it, he doesn't let it go even if it takes time and money.

But he makes it better so it will work. So he will try a first time.

He'll see if he grabbed the dough,

and if he's not grabbed it, it means something is off.

He will reproduce it to know what didn't work,

and he'll make it better and better until the real result that happened.