However, underlining the gang’s amateurism, two text messages detailing the ransom sum and exchange point were never sent due to “technical problems”.
After he was charged, Mr Dutton’s lawyer, Benjamin Charlier, told Nice-Matin his client, who is from Liverpool, had confessed helping organise the kidnap but had not actually taken part in it.
Mr Dutton told his lawyer that he had served in British special forces and that he had been wounded, suffering severe burns, by a mine in Afghanistan in 2011.
He claimed he had three years of treatment for his wounds in various military hospitals and that when he returned to the UK he did not get a military pension. His personal life suffered, he said, after his injuries and his Bulgarian wife had returned to Bulgaria with their daughter.
However, speaking to UK media shortly after his arrest, his uncle, James Daley, who lives near Langton in Lancashire, said: “He has never been in the SAS and as far as I know he has not been to Afghanistan.
“He went into the Army at 18 but to my mind he wasn’t grown up enough.”
He was doing odd jobs around Nice, including working as a security guard for a private beach club, until he was allegedly hired to be part of the kidnap gang and promised a payout at the end of the operation.
Mr Serena’s lawyer claimed his client had been turned into the “ideal scapegoat” and questioned claims by Mr Dutton that he was the mastermind.
