Gang charged with Europe-wide diamond switch scam

The Croisette Beach in Cannes, southern France, earlier this year. An expensive diamond was stolen from a Cannes hotel in August. Photo / AP file

A gang of five women and two men has been charged with running a Europe-wide confidence scam based in France in which gang members posed as buyers of gems worth millions of pounds and replaced them with fakes.

One of the female suspects reportedly confessed to having used this method to steal a €4.5 million diamond from a top Cannes hotel in August.

A judge in Nancy, eastern France, has charged the seven, reportedly Romanian and Serbian nationals aged between 26 and 53, with theft by an organised gang and remanded them in custody.

Operating out of Seine-Saint-Denis, northwest of Paris, as well as the Val-de-Marne near the capital and Besançon, eastern France, the gang have been charged with a number of thefts around Europe.

Among the most spectacular took place in August when a Russian buyer travelled from Switzerland to sell a 101-carat diamond worth €4.5m in Cannes.

The seller sent an intermediary to meet a 53-year old Serbian woman, one of the accused, who arrived by taxi.

When asked to return the gem until confirmation that payment had been wired, she managed to replace the real diamond with a fake in the same case and place the precious gem into a bag with a false bottom.

She left and then handed the real jewel over to accomplices and vanished.

The gang are also suspected of stealing gems worth between €7m and €15m in Barcelona, as well as conducting thefts in Austria and taking €185,000 from a vintage car collector in Zurich, Switzerland.

Police in Besançon netted the thieves after monitoring some gang members suspected of committing "rip deals" - a type of robbery where one party makes off with the money as well as the items.

The scam involved wads of fake banknotes with a few real ones on top to lure unsuspecting parties into handing over their goods.