A botched Paris watch heist has led French investigators to a list of 26 wealthy figures marked for home invasions, with Kylian Mbappé among the names.
The suspect is Clément L., an 18-year-old Franco-Swiss inmate already serving a sentence at Villepinte prison in Seine-Saint-Denis for armed robbery and pimping. He was placed under formal investigation in Nanterre on 21 August, charged with organised robbery and leading a criminal gang, and is being held in solitary confinement.
Prosecutors say he ran the operation from his cell under the Snapchat alias “Lester Z”, issuing instructions to accomplices on the outside through the messaging app.
The Paris watch heist that unravelled it
The break came from two spring incidents. On 25 April, three men posed as delivery drivers and tried to talk their way into a watchmaker’s home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris, leaving an empty cardboard box behind when the target refused them entry.
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Just over a week later, on 4 May, two armed men on scooters walked out of a Paris watch shop with €150,000 in stock. One of the getaway riders crashed and was arrested on the spot.
26 addresses on a seized phone
Two phones seized from the cell held the addresses and details of 26 targets. Alongside Mbappé were a rapper, jewellery-shop owners, a Chinese wholesaler in the city’s 19th arrondissement and a Turkish meat wholesaler in Val-d’Oise.
A judicial source told Le Parisien the 18-year-old “also wanted to target a rapper and footballer Kylian Mbappé”.
The network’s home invasions and attempted abductions ran between 11 April and 19 August, with incidents in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt in Val-d’Oise and Santenay in Côte-d’Or. No attack was ever carried out against Mbappé.
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Investigators also recovered plastic ties and five iPhones from Clément L.’s belongings.
Ringleader held in isolation at Villepinte
A second suspect was later arrested and admitted involvement during questioning, but insisted he was only a middleman. He has been released under judicial supervision, while Clément L. remains in isolation at Villepinte.
Appearing before the investigating chamber in Versailles on 2 September, the teenager, who had dropped out of the first year of a vocational cooking course, told the panel he understood the gravity of what he was accused of.
“I know the facts are serious,” he said.
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