Were they attracted by the lure of gain? A couple in their fifties, living in Haute-Garonne, was sentenced on Monday by the court of Périgueux (Dordogne) for abuse of weakness on a vulnerable person, report our colleagues from France Blue. The victim couple indeed suffers from blindness for one and from a physical handicap. It is, in this case, the uncle and aunt of the defendant. With her husband, they will have to pay 518,000 euros in damages to the victims.
It all started in August 2014 when the couple from Dordogne, then aged 59 and 61, won the jackpot after playing in a bar-tabac. Disconcerted, according to their lawyer, faced with this sum of more than half a million euros, they then decide to seek help from their niece who lives in Haute-Garonne and whose husband is a bank manager. “Don’t talk about it to the rest of the family, we will come to see you soon”, would have then asked the couple from Haut Garonne, according to South West.
A “family deal” according to the defendants
A sort of “family deal” would then have been made in order to declare to La Française the games they had won together. The real winners then receive 63,000 euros, when the couple condemned today receive 450,000 euros. The latter promise the vulnerable sixties to build them a house. This one, of 130 m², is well erected.
Except that, according to the niece, the “deal” provided that the house enters its heritage, while the sixties would be tenants (against 700 euros per month). A way, still according to the niece and the bank manager who “wanted to help”, to allow the sixties to preserve their “social benefits and unemployment benefits”.
A version that did not convince the court. The victim couple had filed a complaint in 2020 after the niece and her husband wanted to evict them from the said house. They accuse them of having “paid off their debt and bought two apartments in Toulouse” with their winnings. The niece and her banker husband are therefore sentenced, among other things, to a fine of 10,000 euros for abuse of weakness, including 4,000 suspended. The house is confiscated and the victims could recover it. The defendants also had one of the two apartments purchased in the pink city confiscated.