Eleven People Face Trial in France for Selling Fake African Artifacts

Eleven people are being tried in a French court after being accused of manufacturing and dealing fake African artifacts. The group allegedly sold more than $1 million in fabricated artifacts.

According to accounts of their activities that were reported by Le Parisien, they often targeted Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, a neighborhood that is home to a number of art galleries. There, the scammers reportedly approached people in the street, asking if they liked or were interested in African art.

According to the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC) of the National Directorate of Judicial Police (DNPJ), scams of this kind have occurred in the area for roughly the last ten years.

After giving her number to one of the suspects, a victim claims she was contacted by several people thereafter. She reportedly visited the Rue des Beaux-Arts with a man who claimed to be interested in acquiring an old collection of art. She was approached by a man who claimed to sell ancient African art at relatively low cost, despite its seemingly high value. He claimed to have stored these objects in the city’s 19th arrondissement.

Though some nearby gallery owners may be perturbed, clients and collectors have supposedly not been impacted.

The 11 scammers involved will be tried in Bobigny in June 2025.