In the Haut-Rhin, a legal representative suspected of having stolen 750,000 euros from people placed under guardianship
A couple suspected of having embezzled 750,000 euros was taken into custody and referred on March 23. The wife, a legal representative from the Haut-Rhin, would have for ten years punctured this sum from the accounts of nearly one hundred and eighty people placed under guardianship by the justice system and for whom she was responsible.
Investigations began in the summer “2021, after the complaint of an heiress, because the notary in charge of the succession of a protected adult had noted anomalies”explained the prosecutor of the Republic of Mulhouse, Edwige Roux-Morizot.
The financial brigade of the departmental security of Mulhouse carried out the investigation for two years. According to her, the alleged facts started in 2012, the year during which the suspect had started her activity in Pfastatt, near Mulhouse, after having worked for an agent subsequently convicted of embezzlement.
Husband prosecuted for concealment
In about ten years, the fifty-year-old would have embezzled some 750,000 euros from one hundred and seventy-six people placed under legal protection measures and whom she had to support from a social, administrative, legal and financial point of view. She made transfers directly from the victims’ bank accounts, to which she had access, to her personal account and also had a professional account into which the fees due to her for her activity were paid.
“The law provides for an annual control of judicial representatives carried out by the director of judicial registry services”said M.me Roux Morizot. But the suspect “falsifying account statements, it was not possible to notice without a thorough check. And it is true that this control can hardly be deepened with regard to the means, time and staff, to make it possible to detect fraud in the event of make-up of the accounts”she explained.
When the facts broke out, the agent was managing nearly two hundred files, which were immediately withdrawn from her.
Her husband, with whom she shared the account to which the embezzled sums were transferred, is being prosecuted for concealment. The couple will be tried on May 25 before the Mulhouse Criminal Court.