Some stories have nothing to do with football at all.
They involve a footballer’s name being used without their knowledge, in a way that exposes a much wider problem.
And when a recognisable Premier League star gets dragged into something like this, it tends to attract attention well beyond the sport itself.
Ex-Arsenal and Lyon striker Alexandre Lacazette used in £170,000 scam
According to Foot Mercato, Alexandre Lacazette was at the centre of a family benefits fraud case in France.
A man in his forties used fake identity documents in the striker’s name to swindle around €200,000 from the French family allowance fund, known as the CAF.
Lacazette himself was entirely uninvolved.
His name, date of birth, and place of birth were simply lifted and used to construct multiple fraudulent files.
The scale of what was uncovered sits within a record-breaking year for fraud detection in France.
The CAF, which distributes close to €100 billion in financial support to over 13 million recipients annually, detected more than €508 million worth of fraudulent claims in 2025 alone.
This case was among the most striking ones to emerge.
What makes it even more remarkable is how it ended.
The man responsible was eventually arrested not during a routine investigation, but while visiting the CAF office in Nice to complain that his own RSA had been suspended.
He walked in to dispute a payment and walked out in handcuffs.
The prosecutor subsequently requested a five-year custodial sentence.
For the Ex-Arsenal man, the entire episode serves as an uncomfortable reminder of how a public profile can be exploited.
Here, it was used for something else entirely.
And the man responsible wasn’t even careful enough to stay away from the very institution he was defrauding.
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