In France, it’s illegal for consumers to order a DNA spit kit. Activists are fighting over lifting the ban

PARIS — From scanning her resume, you’d never guess Nathalie Jovanovic-Floricourt was an expert enabler of criminal activity. For years, she’d fretted over photo quality and page layout for publishing houses. Since 2007, she’s worked in communications for a bank — hardly a bastion of activist law-breakers. She lives in a quiet town an hour’s train ride away from Paris.

Then again, her underworld of choice is more socially acceptable than most: Jovanovic-Floricourt is a self-styled fixer for black-market genetic tests. She’s not a dealer. She doesn’t import spit-in-a-cup kits on anyone else’s behalf. She’s just tried out a bunch of different companies for herself — ordering them to an American package forwarding firm, say, if the manufacturer won’t ship directly to France — and helped others to do the same through talks, salons, books, and blog posts. Often, she says, fellow genealogists come to her with questions about their results.

“In doing these genetic ancestry tests, we’re risking a fine of 3,750 euros” — about $4,140 — “at least in theory,” she said one afternoon in late