830,000 euros stolen and a hellish end to his life in Morocco: a man in his forties robs his 88-year-old partner

The trial of a man accused of defrauding a woman 49 years his senior of more than 800,000 euros by entering into a civil partnership with her before confining her to Morocco, opened Monday before the criminal court of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

This Frenchman, aged 46 today and in pre-trial detention since 2023, is appearing for two days in Pau for kidnapping, sequestration, abuse of weakness and money laundering.

In 2019, the accused met the victim, introducing himself as a wine seller, and realized that the elderly woman, then 88 years old and a long-time widow, had neither children nor close family.

He convinces her that he can take care of her, makes her leave her accommodation in Béarn and, in February 2020, he enters into a civil partnership with this woman 49 years his senior who gives him, before a notary, power of attorney over her financial assets.

The alleged embezzlement began two weeks later. According to the prosecution, the man closed the victim's bank accounts and life insurance policies to recover a total of €830,000. He then arranged for her to acquire real estate through the creation of a property investment company (SCI) and misappropriated her monthly pension of €1,300.

After moving into "at least three different residences," the now 90-year-old woman left France for Morocco in 2022, taken there by the accused. Dispossessed of her belongings, she lived with the family of his new partner. Investigators discovered her confined to a room of approximately three square meters, with a window and a toilet at the entrance.

The alert came in 2023 from a business creation intermediary whom the accused had used. "Stunned" by the age difference after mistakenly receiving a copy of the civil partnership agreement, she reported the situation to a distant nephew of the victim.

"By seizing her savings, her pension and her bank card, he made her dependent on him, eliminating her free will and her freedom to come and go, accentuating the disorientation of this old lady and ultimately sending her permanently to Morocco, a country that is completely unknown to her," the prosecution argues.

Arrested upon his return to France, the accused, who faces 20 years in prison, denies the charges, maintaining that he always had the victim's consent. The victim died in 2025 at the age of 94 in a retirement home in Casablanca.

Initially referred for complicity before the departmental criminal court, the notary benefited from a dismissal before the investigating chamber.