Paris Court Jails Clan for Child Pickpocketing at Disneyland

Seven members of a Roma clan of Bosnian origin have been convicted by a Paris court of trafficking children and young women as pickpockets, sending them in groups to prey on tourists at Disneyland Paris, Charles de Gaulle airport and the Paris Métro, where the network brought in an average of €25,000 a day.

The tribunal correctionnel de Paris delivered the verdict on 23 September, sentencing the family patriarch Roberto Hamidovic, 48, to the maximum eight years in prison and a €500,000 fine. His wife, Lejla, received six years and a €300,000 fine. Two of their sons, a nephew and two female relatives were given prison terms of between five and seven years, each with accompanying fines. All seven were barred permanently from French territory, as the prosecution had requested.

A Family Business Spanning Three Generations

The case marks the third time that members of the Hamidovic family have stood trial in France for human trafficking, spanning roughly two decades and three generations. According to The Guardian, detectives had been investigating the network for years before the current prosecution, and investigators at one point believed the clan was responsible for as much as 75% of thefts on the Paris Métro.

The family’s history with French justice is long and grim. In 2010, police dismantled what was then described as the largest child pickpocketing ring ever seen in Paris, arresting Roberto’s uncle, Fehmi Hamidovic — then 58 and already convicted of people-trafficking in Austria — along with his two sons near Rome and a dozen other clan members across southern France and Italy. As the Guardian reported at the time, the Paris judicial police chief, Christian Flaesch, said: “It feels like we have broken up a completely medieval structure.”

Fehmi was convicted in 2013, and after his imprisonment Roberto took control of the clan. Other family members were convicted again in 2025, and French authorities say yet another branch of the family is due to face trial in the coming weeks on similar charges, alongside members of a different clan.

A System Built on Impunity and Fear

The investigation that led to this month’s verdict was opened in late 2022, covering offences committed between January 2022 and March 2024, and culminated in a police operation and a series of arrests in March 2024. Prosecutors described a rigid hierarchy in which men decided who would steal and where, while children — mostly the family’s own, but also other exploited minors — and young women stood at the bottom of the ladder.

According to the French news outlet actu.fr, the children were dispatched in groups of six to nine to the Métro, Roissy airport, the Marne-la-Vallée RER platforms and Disneyland Paris — particularly during the evening parades, when crowds were distracted — and told to target foreign tourists. They would return to Paris each day to hand the proceeds of their thefts to the clan’s men, an average of €25,000 daily according to the indictment reviewed by the AFP news agency.

One detail stood out to prosecutors: children under 13 were deliberately used because that age sits below France’s threshold of criminal responsibility. According to the Guardian, the pickpockets were reportedly instructed to tell police they were 12 years old — a year below the age of accountability — so that officers would have to release them. Separately, the Belgian outlet HLN reported that some of the girls exploited by the network were as young as 10.

Behind the operation’s apparent discipline lay brutality. Children and young women who failed to meet quotas faced beatings, burns or sexual violence, the court heard. The prosecutor, Alice Guillet, described the girls’ daily lives as “challenging and painful”, calling them “children without roots, without a future, whose parents sometimes don’t even know their birth date”.

Meanwhile, the adults lived lavishly — courting casinos, luxury hotels and restaurants, owning expensive cars and jewellery, and posing with bundles of cash on social media. Roberto Hamidovic and his wife are believed to have amassed an estimated €2 million, much of it reportedly hidden abroad; the couple spent part of their time in the Croatian Adriatic resort of Pula.

Victims Turned Perpetrators

One of the case’s most uncomfortable threads is the way the exploitation reproduced itself. Guillet noted that the seven accused had themselves been forced to steal as children, a cycle she described starkly. “What chance did they have of not putting the younger children to work in turn as soon as they were old enough?” she said. “The chances were slim, if not nonexistent. They went from being victims to perpetrators … we have to stop this defeatism and fatalism.”

At trial, the defendants denied any organised network. Roberto Hamidovic claimed he was a secondhand car dealer earning between €2,000 and €5,000 a month. His lawyer, Emperatriz Aguirre, called the sentences too severe, telling the AFP that “regarding the crime of human trafficking there was no tangible evidence”.

No children testified, in order to protect their identities. Many of the dozens exploited have since disappeared or been taken into care; according to the Guardian, almost half of those placed with social services are believed to have run away.

What Comes Next

Guillet framed the severity of the sentences — long prison terms followed by expulsion from France — as the only lever available against a system she said had operated with impunity for three generations. “In the face of such a system, the only tool is severity,” she said. “This sends a message.”

The verdict closes one chapter but leaves open questions. A further trial involving another branch of the Hamidovic family is expected within weeks, and the fate of the exploited children — many now scattered or missing — remains unresolved. For French authorities, the deeper challenge is whether repeated prosecutions of the same family can finally break a cycle that, for decades, has turned its youngest victims into its next enforcers.