Would your apartment rental on Airbnb or Booking are hosting prostitutes? A mishap which is not impossible, because short -term rental platforms are infiltrated by prostitution networks. Extract from a report of “Special Envoy”.
Your apartment hire on platforms like Booking or Airbnb transformed into a passage? Almost everywhere in France, individual housing is infiltrated by prostitution networks. Short -term rentals offer a certain discretion, hence a sharp increase in this form of exploitation of prostitution. This is what the Ocrteh agents note (Central Office for the Repression of the Trading of Human beings). In 2017, she represented half of the cases they treated, against 85% today.
Since prostitution is gradually leaving the street, it is on the Internet that its investigators have traced the Posting Networks, from escort sites. Their work combines “Telephone surveillance of the prostitute located in a short -term rental apartment, which will receive all day from the SMS of potential customers to which she will answer” et “Physical monitoring to confirm with photographs what we see about listening to telephone”.
These surveys do not target prostitutes, but the networks of which they are the victims: “From an apartment for prostitution, continues the agent interviewed by “Special Envoy”, You can bounce back on 2, 3, 10, 15 (others) “, et andVenteellement “Establish a very important network”.
And the owners of these apartments, what do they risk in justice? Most are in good faith and “fall under the clouds by noting that there is a prostitutional activity in their premises”. But those who praise their apartment knowingly to maximize their earnings fall “Under the blow of pimping” – Defined in particular by helping the prostitution of others and to take advantage of it. The penal code provides for this offense a sentence of up to 10 years’ imprisonment, and 750,000 euros fine.
In fact, it is often difficult to establish the complicity of the lessor. “Special Envoy” met, in Metz, one of the few owners condemned for pimping. Interviewed by the police, who have been monitoring the apartment discreetly for several years, some of His tenants said “that it was aware that it was a rental for prostitution, that it did not bother him “, more “That he didn’t want to have stories, that you shouldn’t make noise.”
This owner who has put four rental apartments on Airbnb and Booking says “stunned” to be implicated for pimping. He claims to have taken measures after certain complaints from the neighbors, but have “never had proof that these places were used for prostitution”. His defense did not convince the court, which sentenced him to a fine of 20,000 euros, a confirmed sentence on appeal.
Extract from “Chérie, there is a prostitute in our bed!”, A report to see in “Special Envoy” on April 17, 2025.
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