Thieves have already made about thirty victims in the North of France, with a particular technique: hypnosis in the middle of the street. Most of them are elderly women of North African origin.
Several complaints received at the Lille prosecutor’s office
Complaints have followed one another to the Lille prosecutor’s office since last November, to denounce thefts with the same characteristics. The malefactor approaches the victim and begins to talk to him insistently. He asks for the hand of his interlocutor to deposit a black stone and all of a sudden the victim no longer sees anything. This allows the criminal to take away jewelry, money and valuables and then disappear. In general, the victim does not realize the theft until five to ten minutes later. This practice is not yet widely known, and the victims find it difficult to make themselves understood, because of the psychological nature of the attack.
Strangely, the victims seem to give away their valuables of their own free will. The thieves are therefore not worried by justice for the moment. To change this, victims testify about RTL, calling for a “collective awareness of the extent of this phenomenon.”
“I went to withdraw the money he asked for and I brought him back”
The victims lose all their means and sometimes end up letting the individual come to their house to take money and jewelry, explains a reportage from BMFTV. And these assaults under hypnosis do not take place only in the North. Other cases exist, in particular with the use of a powdered drug administered by inhalation, nicknamed “devil’s breath” (or “dragon’s breath“). In 2015 in Paris, this method had allowed thieves to rob a dozen people. This drug causing memory loss and above all a suspension of free will, has similarities with this approach of hypnosis.
The perpetrators of these numerous thefts by hypnosis in the North are still wanted by the police, while the victims are reluctant to testify because of shame. Some do not even talk about what happened to them to their loved ones. In December 2020, a victim even committed suicide after being stripped of his personal effects.