Have you received an alarming email from the Minister of the Interior summoning you to a hearing for sexual practices prohibited by law? Do not respond to this message, it is just a scam!
Recently, you may have received a summons by email accusing you of offering, sharing, distributing and exchanging pornographic or child pornography materials and of having committed non-violent sexual assaults on minors. The subject of the message may for example be “Case N46/07537”. These emails claim to be sent by the National Gendarmerie, the National Police, the Paris Police Prefecture, the Ministry of the Interior or Europol.
The email is as follows: “Hello, please see the file below! Your response is mandatory for processing. A decision will be sent to you shortly after a response from you to the address indicated on the file. Kind regards.” A very vague message, without a signatory. The email contains a file titled “For more details_CONV”. Perfect to pique your curiosity!
You click on it and discover some very alarming content, since it is nothing more and nothing less than a summons for a “guilty hearing report”. “We are taking legal action against you shortly after a computer seizure by Cyber-infiltration for: child pornography, exhibitionism, cyber pornography” can you read. Just that! You are asked to send by email “your justifications so that they can be indicted and verified in order to assess the sanctions” within 72 hours, after which the authorities will arrest you and forward your file to anti-pedophile associations and to the media so that your name is made public, tarnishing your reputation.
Rest assured, these summonses are fake. No investigative service does this to summon or question an accused person. Sending written summonses is indeed possible, but it occurs by mail that limits itself to an extremely brief description of the reasons why the recipient will be heard, on a date, time and address corresponding to a police station or gendarmerie. These summonses do not require any response by email. The objective of this scam is to get you to pay a sum of money or to have you communicate your personal data.
To be sure to deceive their victims, scammers do not hesitate to use the official letterheads of the Ministry of the Interior, to resort to a threatening lexical field, reinforced by a red font for certain passages, and to quote articles of law at will. The short response time required creates a sense of urgency in order to prevent you from finding out more and thinking clearly. But behind the legal gibberish, the request does not really make sense. French justice does not work like that!
If you pay attention, several details can give you a clue. First of all, the sender’s address is suspicious since the email was sent by a certain Gend-interieur-Gouv- FR ([email protected]). Needless to say, it doesn’t look serious or official at all. The email or document may also contain spelling or grammar mistakes, signs that it doesn’t come from an official organization.
We can’t stress this enough, but be wary of what you receive by email. Always remember to check the sender’s address. If in doubt, contact the organization directly via its official channels. If you ever receive this message, do not respond to it! Forward it immediately to Signal Spam, Pharos, or directly to 33 700, the platform specializing in reporting scams. You can also report these fraudulent messages to the website internet-signalement.gouv.fr.