Roberto Hamidović (48), head of a clan that organised a network of child pickpocketing gangs, has been convicted of human trafficking in Paris. The court handed him the maximum sentence - eight years in prison and a 500,000-euro fine. The children, mostly girls of around ten, robbed tourists on the Paris metro and at Disneyland. Police estimate they brought in up to 25,000 euros a day. The French press compared the clan to Fagin's gang from Dickens's novel.

The trial heard what happened to the children when they didn't bring back enough money: they were beaten, burned or sexually abused. At the same time the adults lived in luxury - designer clothes, five-star hotels, expensive restaurants, luxury cars and gambling. The children slept in cheap hotels and abandoned buildings.

Seven members of the clan in total - four men and three women - were charged with human trafficking, organised theft, inciting minors to commit crimes, money laundering and criminal association. All denied guilt. His wife Lejla got six years in prison and a 300,000-euro fine, and his two sons, grandson and two relatives between five and seven years. After serving their sentences, all will be deported, with a permanent ban on entering France. They are a Roma family originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and investigators describe the network as international, active in several European countries.

A family business across three generations

For investigators who have tracked the clan for decades, this is history repeating itself. As far back as 2010, French police arrested Roberto's uncle, Fehmi Hamidović, who had already been convicted of human trafficking in Austria. The then head of the Paris judicial police, Christian Flaesch, said they had the feeling they had "broken up a completely medieval structure". After Fehmi was sentenced to seven years in 2013, Roberto took over. The clan is estimated to have been responsible for 75 percent of thefts on the Paris metro. Roberto himself told the court he traded in second-hand cars and earned between 2,000 and 5,000 euros a month.

Prosecutor Alice Guillet painted a different picture. The children were ordered to tell police they were 12 - one year below the age of criminal responsibility in France - so the authorities had to let them go. Groups of six to nine children were sent out every day to Disneyland, Charles de Gaulle airport and the metro. They also lurked by cash machines: they waited for a customer to enter their PIN, then surrounded them and snatched the cash. Roberto and his wife are estimated to have amassed around two million euros, much of it believed to be hidden abroad. The couple spent part of each year in Pula.

His son Roberto Junior, known as Goni (22), supervised the gangs and managed the taxis that ferried the children around Paris. He has already been in prison for two years, where, according to the French press, he wears his Gucci tracksuit. His son, born in Milan, is named Al Capone and is looked after by a nanny in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cousin Lole Hamidović named his eldest daughter Dior. To celebrate his brother's release from prison, Goni spent 1,420 euros on two bottles of champagne in a Paris nightclub.

The prosecutor spoke of a vicious circle: the seven defendants had themselves been forced to steal for their parents as children. "From victims they became perpetrators. We have to break that fatalism," she said. "The only tool against a system like this is severity." Roberto Hamidović's lawyer, Emperatriz Aguirre, said the sentences were too harsh, as there was no tangible evidence of human trafficking.

The adults are now going to prison. Where the children are is much harder to say. Most of the dozen or so children the clan used disappeared after the arrests. Others were taken in by social services and placed with foster families, and it is estimated that nearly half of them have since run away. The clan kept operating for three generations despite every previous conviction. Who is looking for the children who are gone now?