“This kind of amount at checkout does not exist”: how Carrefour stores are suspected of diverting money from promotions

Cheese sold at 30% less, a free pot of crème fraîche for every two pots purchased, sandwich bread at half price… Every week, Carrefour makes promotions labeled “immediate discounts” available to its customers. These discounts are covered by the hypermarket's various suppliers after each checkout. But this practice seems to have opened the door to vast fraud based on fictitious sales of promotional products to the detriment of these brands, reveals "Complement d'investigation" in its issue of Thursday, October 15.

According to information gathered by the magazine, a tenant-manager of the group – these independents authorized to operate a store under the Carrefour brand in exchange for payment of a royalty – would have organized phantom sales of reduced products. Objective: to unduly collect the immediate discounts paid by suppliers. To support its revelations, “Additional investigation” relies in particular on 15 receipts, dated 2022, for very high amounts, printed in a hypermarket from 9 a.m. to 9:35 a.m., less than an hour after the store opened.

The documents show colossal sales, far removed from simple shopping: 776 bottles of spirits for an amount of 17,000 euros, 20,347 bottles of mineral water billed for just over 8,000 euros, all in a few minutes. “This kind of cash amount doesn’t exist,” says an anonymous source interviewed by the magazine. Complicated, in fact, to imagine a customer loading this merchandise into their car.

This source details a system which, according to it, is reproduced regularly: "On a ticket for 7,000 euros, you will have 2,998 euros which will be returned to the store by the supplier (...) without these products having been sold." For the receipts studied by “Complément d’investigation”, the jackpot for the manager theoretically represents 18,810 euros received unduly. In total, “Additional investigation” was able to consult 77 false sales tickets, spread over six days in 2022 and 2023. Contacted, the management of this store never responded.

A tenant-manager indicted in Alsace

According to several Carrefour store managers with whom the “Complementary investigation” teams spoke, these practices are not isolated. Many also admit to having used it: "These are things that are done, I don't know a store that doesn't do it. We're talking about 100,000 euros per year," explains one of them. “It can represent between 50,000 and 100,000 euros,” adds another. A final manager justifies himself: "Why are we doing it? Because our profitability is so rotten that we are doing what we can to try to improve it, or at least [to] survive."

The receipt affair, revealed by the magazine, recalls another, which dates back to May. In Illzach (Haut-Rhin), in the suburbs of Mulhouse, a Carrefour tenant-manager is suspected of having defrauded 1.5 million euros from his suppliers using the same methods.

The Mulhouse public prosecutor's office has opened a judicial investigation for "organized gang fraud", "misuse of corporate assets", "money laundering" and "receiving". The manager was indicted on May 13 for "organized gang fraud" and "misuse of corporate assets", and placed in pre-trial detention for three months, reports "Complement of investigation". He admitted "generally the facts" according to the Mulhouse prosecutor cited by ICI Alsace, but disputes the accusation of "money laundering", according to his lawyer.

The magazine reveals, with supporting photos, that a ghost cash register was discovered by investigators in the back room of the Illzach store. This tool would have allowed the manager to systematize these fictitious sales.

“The money goes into the store’s pocket”

Hundreds of stores throughout France could engage in this type of fraudulent practice. According to “Additional investigation”, Carrefour had already been questioned, from 2024, by one of its suppliers. The industrialist, who wishes to remain anonymous, had sent several emails and had also contacted the Consumer Business Liaison Institute (Ilec), a lobbying association which defends the interests of brands against mass distribution groups. He wanted to report the same malfunctions in “300 to 400 stores” under the Carrefour brand.

"Already, for some industrialists, we are dealing with amounts of several hundred thousand euros each time. So overall, we are talking about several million euros [of fraud], it is obvious", worry the representatives of Ilec. The organization also sent a letter to the 110 brands it represents and whose products are sold in Carrefour stores, in order to check whether they could be affected by such actions.

Of the 55 manufacturers who responded, 17 say they have noticed abnormal reimbursements, or almost a third of those surveyed. “It is the capture of undue values ​​since the money which should go into the pocket of the consumer actually goes into the pocket of the store, which is very serious from a financial point of view”, condemns Ilec to “Complément d’investigation”.

“Carrefour will not hesitate to report the facts to the competent authorities”

As “Additional investigation” reveals, in the spring of 2026, after the Illzach affair, Carrefour management sent a letter to all of its tenant-managers. The group strongly condemns “these particularly serious facts” and announces that sanctions will be taken for “any similar behavior”. “Carrefour will not hesitate to take any useful action in order to obtain compensation for the damage suffered, to report the facts to the competent authorities when the circumstances justify it and to draw all contractual consequences from such actions,” lists the letter.

Could the Carrefour group have been aware of the existence of such practices? This seems technically possible, according to a former executive of the brand and according to internal documents that “Complément d’investigation” has obtained. They come from the group's software which centralizes the accounts of 117 hypermarkets managed by independents and show the existence of massive refunds of products supposed to have been sold to customers before being reimbursed.

In January 2026, the day before the end of the promotions, all of these 117 hypermarkets recorded 1.114 million euros in reimbursements in a single day. The prize goes to a Landes hypermarket, which declared that it had reimbursed its customers to the tune of 170,000 euros that same day. Six months later, on the last day of a new promotional period in mid-June, a few weeks after the arrest of the Alsatian boss suspected of fraud and after the reminder letter to Carrefour, we see that the amounts linked to reimbursements are falling: 155,594 euros only for all 117 hypermarkets, or seven times less.

Asked about all these questions, Carrefour once again strongly condemned these practices and claims to have strengthened its control procedures after a few alerts a little less than two years ago. He also specifies: “Although we have a control system, the deliberate falsification of computer data constitutes a fraudulent act that is complex to detect.” The investigation into fraud concerning the Mulhouse store is still ongoing. His former manager is presumed innocent. The Carrefour group has become a civil party in this case.