Gilbert Chikli, 52, was born into a poor family in Paris with Jewish ancestry and grew up in a civilian community.

He was an unconscious child when he was young. He studied in boarding school, but left school at the age of 13. He was arrested for stealing chickens and dogs for the first time.

Chikli is very smart, but unfortunately he did not use his intelligence to the right way, but to "deceive people".

Chikli first committed a bigger crime more than a decade ago.

During the 18 months from 2005 to 2006, he focused on a number of large enterprises with strong financial resources, including France Post, Lafayette Department Store, Paris Disneyland, HSBC and so on.

He pretended to be the CEO of the company, deceived employees of the company with false executive status, and asked the company to pay cash or transfer money to him by telephone.

A total of 33 enterprises and banks have been deceived, with the amount of deceived up to 60.5 million euros (about 470 million yuan).

After the incident was revealed, 52.6 million euros of the stolen money were recovered.

Chikli was briefly detained and investigated by the French police, but according to the relevant provisions, the police could not detain him indefinitely.

In 2009, the police released him. Chikli saw something wrong and ran away.

He fled to Israel with his ex-wife and two children because Israel often refused to extradite criminals from other countries.

After that, Israel refused to extradite Chikli, despite the demands of the French police.

Later, Chikli divorced his ex-wife, married an Israeli woman, had four children, and acquired dual Israeli and French citizenship.

The French government had nothing to do with him and watched him enjoy himself in a foreign country.

On 20 May 2015, in the absence of defendant Chikli, the Paris Criminal Court convicted him of fraud.

He was sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than seven years and a fine of 10,000 euros.

At this time, Chikli, who lives in Israel, is not panicked.

First, as long as he stays in Israel, he doesn't have to worry about being extradited back to prison.

Second, he has something to do in Israel, which has no effect on his continuing to cheat money.

If Deceiving a CEO of a large company is already a risky act, his next series of operations can be considered bold.

Because this time, he locked his pretense in high-ranking French government officials.

Beginning in the summer of 2015, he began to cheat under the guise of Jean-Yves Le Drian, then Minister of Defence and current Minister of Foreign Affairs of France.

Chikli has his own reasons for choosing this high-ranking official.

Firstly, it is difficult to impersonate officials with high visibility and exposure.

The public are familiar with such officials and are easy to expose and expose.

At that time, Lee Drian, the Minister of Defense, was relatively low-key. People were not so familiar with him and pretended to be safer.

Second, the position of Minister of Defense is beneficial to fraud.

Because Le Drian himself participated in the rescue of the hostages, which had a direct benefit to Chikli's action.

His fraud plan took advantage of this.

Initially, Chikli planned to defraud other governments of money.

The first time he deceived as a minister was to ask the Tunisian government to pay for the purchase of helicopters that did not exist at all.

But the other side found that the multi-million-euro contract was false and Chikli's plan fell through.

Since then, Chikli has come up with another way to turn to wealthy "French friends" and has repeatedly succeeded.

Chikli's fraud went like this:

Initially, one of his associates pretended to be a special adviser to Defense Minister Le Drian and called the victims.

Victims are very wealthy and well-known entrepreneurs.

The associates lied about arranging for the victims to talk to the "minister" by telephone and discuss important matters.

Then Chikli is going to cheat the victim himself.

In order to make the effect more real, he customized a silicone mask according to the minister's own model.

Later, instead of communicating by ordinary telephone, the victim is more likely to believe by choosing a video phone to see the pictures.

Chikli did enough tricks. He would wear a silicone mask and imitate the voice of the minister himself.

Even the surroundings are arranged in the shape of the minister's office, with the national flag hanging behind it and photographs of then French Prime Minister Olander.

If you are not familiar with the minister himself, you can easily be fooled into thinking that you are talking to the real minister.

Now let's look at the efforts of Chikli lobbyists.

He made a particularly good excuse for cheating money - the government needed to pay a ransom to rescue the hostages held by ISIS and urgently needed money.

Chikli will tell the victims that it is not convenient for the French government to pay the ransom directly, and that the matter cannot be made public and should be carried out in secret.

So we need someone to help pay the ransom. The money should be kept in absolute secrecy so that the outside world can not find its source. He will ask the victim to transfer the money to a given bank account.

In fact, Chikli later launders money through bank accounts in Poland, Slovakia and China.

"Rescue hostages" is a very easy thing to generate sympathy. Victims think that they are in chivalry, but in fact they have fallen into the trap of Chikli.

In order to encourage victims to pay, he will also offer attractive conditions.

For example, "lifelong tax exemption" for victims is an attractive economic policy.

Or promise to award the Legion of Honor to the victim, which is the highest honor that French civilians can receive.

They even promised the victims that they could visit the Elysee Palace by private jet as a thank-you for their contribution.

With this bold and thorough deception, Chikli cheated 80 million euros (about 620 million yuan) in total.

Some of the deceived are very famous wealthy people.

For example, Aga Khan, a British billionaire and philanthropist, was cheated out of 18 million euros (about 140 million yuan).

Victims include business leaders, African heads of government, church leaders, AIDS foundations and charities.

Of course, real life is not a movie. It's easy to see through a mask alone.

Chikli and his associates figured out how to deal with it.

In video calls, the effect of the light is often very poor. The fake minister's face is always illuminated and the white flowers can't be seen clearly.

He also keeps a certain distance from the camera, making it impossible to see the details of his face.

It's not easy to impersonate another person for a long time.

Chikli and his colleagues pretend that the signal is not good enough to make video calls intermittent.

And never talk much, only for a short time.

In the eyes of the victims, video calls to "ministers" are enough to convince them of the lies.

Guy-Petrus Lignac, head of the famous French Wine House Platos, was almost deceived, recalling what happened at the time, he said.

"In retrospect, I asked myself a lot of questions. But it did look like him at the time.

"And he's looking for me to serve the country! It's terrible. If he had asked for less money, I would have promised.

Although Chikli's deception deceived many people, he also made mistakes when he was too close.

Some people found out his mistake and were not fooled and successfully avoided the disaster.

For example, President Macky Sall of Senegal,

When Chikli talks to him, he probably feels that the other party is a stately leader and subconsciously uses the honorific title "you".

But he didn't do a background check. The President and Minister Le Drian had a good personal relationship.

They never use the polite and outgoing Title "you" when they talk, but they call you directly.

The president saw the problem in this small detail, questioned Chikli, and was not deceived.

More than once, the victim is rich or rich. Sooner or later, Chikli's trick will be discovered.

It wasn't long before he was followed by the police.

The last case is still unknown, Chikli continues to commit crimes abroad, the French police naturally will not let him go easily, has been looking for the opportunity to arrest him.

On August 18, 2017, the police finally waited for an opportunity to arrest Chikli.

Chikli left Israel and went to Ukraine. At the request of the French police, the local police arrested him soon.

Chikli, however, did not take the police seriously, and still lied about it. He said he was going to worship a rabbi in front of his grave.

But the police found evidence from his mobile phone that the purpose of his trip was to buy the most advanced masks.

And during his detention, Chikli continued to provoke the police.

He paid the guard to bring him a refrigerator with steak and vodka and live a comfortable life.

Then a video was posted on social media to mock and abuse the French police.

How can the French police give up?

On September 20, 2017, Chikli was released because his detention was due.

But the next night, he was arrested again.

At the end of November 2017, Chikli was finally extradited to France and held in a prison near Paris.

This is not the end of Chikli's arrest, because at the beginning of this year, someone again cheated under the guise of Minister Le Drian.

In February, three suspects were arrested in Israel and no fraudulent phone calls have been made since then.

Although it is uncertain, the police suspect that Chikli was a gang.

In addition to the aforementioned colleagues who called the victim for him, there may be other colleagues.

The matter is still under investigation.

Recently, Chikli finally participated in his trial as a defendant.

He was accused of fraud, involving up to 150 victims and a huge amount of money.

Chikli has been in hiding for four years since his last imprisonment.

This time, Chikli was finally arrested and committed a felony of cheating by pretending to be a senior government official. It was impossible for him to escape from prison this time.

Dare to wear masks to deceive the Minister of Defense, which is beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

Chikli finally planted this time.

When he was arrested, he made wild remarks, but in prison in the future, there will be time for him to reflect on his mistakes.