Tight security coordination allows the arrest of the second suspect in the “red mercury” network who defrauded a Marrakchi businessman

B – AZ

A joint operation carefully carried out by the judicial police of the Marrakech prefecture and elements of the Royal Gendarmerie resulted, this Monday afternoon, in the arrest of the second suspect involved in a resounding fraud case.

This network would have succeeded in extracting nearly 8 million dirhams from a Marrakech businessman under pretext for transactions related to the alleged substance called “red mercury”

. The suspect, named Saïd, was arrested at the family home located in the commune of Aït Ourir, in the province of Al Haouz. His location was made possible thanks to advanced technological means, after he escaped a previous trap set in one of the cafes he owns in Tamesna, from where he managed to escape to his native region. The Royal Gendarmerie of Aït Ourir proceeded to draw up the arrest report, before handing over the suspect to the Marrakech judicial police in order to deepen the investigation into the facts with which he is accused, in one of the most important fraud cases to have shaken the city.

Last week, the security services had already put their hands on the alleged leader of the network, Hassan G., aged 48 and residing in Salé, at the end of a targeted surveillance operation which led to his arrest in a café located on Avenue Allal El Fassi in Marrakech.

The first elements of the investigation reveal that the members of the network succeeded in trapping the businessman via a cleverly staged scenario, making him believe that a rich investor from the Gulf wanted to acquire “red mercury” for an amount of 40 million dirhams. To reinforce the deception, they would have used video calls with an accomplice posing as the buyer, showing off large sums of money in order to gain the trust of the victim.

According to the same sources, the scammers created a climate of credibility thanks to fictitious transactions and carefully orchestrated exchanges, to the point of pushing their target into a perfectly elaborate trap, which cost him 800 million cents.

The investigation continues in order to untangle the last threads of this complex affair and to identify other potential accomplices in one of the most spectacular fraud operations that Marrakech has seen in recent years.