Le masque

This documenatry takes on the story of conman Gilbert Chikli who came from very poor upbringing, deciding to get rich by coning the rich with intelligent scams

We meet both him and his accomplished in this, of them his many women, all named Shirley in his scams.

Chikli is not only good as masquerade, but he also had a charm, eb\evn only using his voice. Seeking refuge from French authorities in Israel, they still get him to talk.

The documentary, made by Dominic Sivyer and Yvann Yagchi is well made and it's done in a light exciting way. Grab it at Netflix. Which has become quite a specialist on documentaries lately.

As "The Masked Scammer" (2022 release from France; 80 min.) opens, we are in "Paris, 1995" and a 20 yo woman named Shirley retells how she met a certain Gilbert Chikli. Shirley loves Gilbert's scamming ways. We then go to "Paris, 2006", as Gilbert impersonates being the CEO of a company and manages to convince a employee in the finance department to wire transfer EUR 10 million... At this point we are 10 minutes into the movie.

Couple of comments: first of all, let me state upfront that I had never heard of this conman before, but the scale with which he conned companies, and later even more brazenly impersonates being France's Minister of Defense, is amusing if it weren't so horribly wrong. The scamming of companies by pretending to be the CEO asking a lower level employee's assistance in a "sensitive" matter is common place (as I have seen first hand in my law practice in the US). It is, however, quite another matter to be impersonating, not just via telephone but in video meetings, the second most powerful man in French politics, just below the President. Wow. The documentary uses plenty of talking heads who retell various parts of the story. And how does it all play out? You'' just have to see for yourself!

"The Masked Scammer" recently started streaming on Netflix, and Netflix suggested it to me, based on my viewing habits. This is not a groundbreaking documentary, but just another example of how scammers operate, and quite openly so. If you are in the mood for a quick true crime documentary, I'd readily suggest you check it out and draw your own conclusion.

I found this scammer documentary rather boring mostly because it was the same exact crime over and over again. The criminal uses the same script on each person he scams out of millions of euros at a time. Sine his scam (which was dreamed up by his first girlfriend) worked, he stuck with the script. That just makes it a boting story to watch. He follows the same script in his personal life as well basically ghosting his loyal 2 girlfriends and then getting another online. They try and make him out to be charismatic and mysterious when he relies on the loyal girlfriends to fo alot of the dirtywork (Use their phone,etc).

I had the feeling of just another scammer. Nothing groundbreaking in this production. There are times I and a lot of people will develop some sort of sympathy with a sympathetic scammer, but those times I would and could sense that there's a real and somewhat good person behind such things as scamming people. Gilbert Chikli i neither sympathetic nor a genius. He's a small-time criminal you could meet in the street wanting to sell you a cheap watch and tell you it's an original Rolex or Patek Philippe. I'm rather chockad that people would get scammed, many didn't, from such petty criminal. I don't think he will learn anything from being in jail more thankful being an annoyance to guards with his megalomania, which he tells himself.