“Crime tourists” at the Paris 2024 Olympics: Organized gangs came from South America to rob fans

Teams of South American criminals, particularly trained and organized, were active during the Paris Olympic Games (July 26-August 11), targeting tourists in priority, the authorities noted in a confidential note.

In a note devoted to the actions of these gangs, it is thus highlighted, according to a source close to the case, a significant proportion of arrests of South American nationals from Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Colombia among all those implicated in thefts during the Olympic Games.

Organized in gangs of three to five individuals, with interchangeable members, men or women aged 30 to 50, specialists in pickpocketing, they particularly targeted foreign tourists, mainly on public transport or in hotels.

These “associations” are described in the note, according to the same source, as “highly mobile and linked to international criminal organizations” and specialized in “appropriation crime” (pickpocketing, breaking and entering, by trickery, etc.). The criminals' methods of operation are detailed there.

Some of the accused are suspected of being linked to gangs in Chile associated with the criminal organization “Lanzas internacionales”.

The range of action of these teams extends over several states in Europe, the Middle East and Canada, specifies this source, who describes them as “crime tourists”. The members of these structures, who see theft as a "real profession", transmit among themselves a "culture of practicing theft committed abroad", and often hold Spanish residence permits, a country they use as a gateway and a rear base.

Itinerancy

Given their itinerancy, these teams are subject to special monitoring by police organizations such as Europol and Interpol. As an illustration, during the Olympic Games, a dozen or so incidents could be attributed to a South American team, including the theft of a camera worth 15,000 euros used to broadcast images of the diving events that took place at the Olympic Aquatic Center in Saint-Denis.

The investigation into this team led to the arrest of three men and a woman, all of Colombian nationality, in early August in a vacation rental in Seine-Saint-Denis. Investigators discovered laptops, jewelry, luxury watches, cash and also clothes stamped “Paris 2024” used by the criminals and the accreditation stolen from an American athlete.

They were sentenced in mid-August to two years of imprisonment with continued detention by the Bobigny criminal court, as well as a ban on appearing in France for ten years at the end of their sentence.

Other teams of South Americans, according to the note, were even equipped with false accreditations and false bracelets to access the Olympic sites and the Olympic village as well as false papers (identity, press card, etc.). Some of these accesses were intended to be resold, according to investigators.

Some worked in public transport or hotels (in the halls or around them), always targeting foreign tourists. In these different cases, Ecuadorians, Chileans, Argentinians and Cubans were arrested. This is not the first time that networks of thieves from Latin America have distinguished themselves at sporting events in France.

Some of the Colombians convicted last August had come to Paris for the Champions League final in May 2022, which was infamous for its security breaches and the increase in tourist thefts.

In July 2022, three Peruvians were sentenced in Bobigny to six to nine months of suspended imprisonment for receiving stolen phones from supporters. After the Champions League final, 80 complaints were received by the authorities.

The presence of these teams this summer in France for the Games had been, according to the source close to the case, anticipated by the police who are in close contact with the authorities of the countries of the nationals concerned.