Almost 5,636,000 euros! At the end of almost seven years of investigation and numerous appeals, it is the estimate of the jackpot generated by the fraud in the false wills of a former notary and his accomplices for the only non-prescribed facts, a case uncovered by the JDD in 2017 You will face charges of fraud and concealment in an organized gang in the Cusset Criminal Court (Allier) from March 27th to 31st. The main person responsible for these fraudulent inheritance thefts, Jean-Louis Magnin, 67, alone would have taken more than 4.7 million euros.
Notary Magnin has not been a notary since his one-year suspended sentence for abuse of weakness in 2005, but he knows all the codes and, above all, emphasizes the accusation that he knows “the weakness of the system” and “the lack of it”. notarial verification of the authenticity of holographic wills”; Documents that are entirely handwritten, signed and dated by the testator, as opposed to a notarized will. Without the shrewdness of a Vichyssois bailiff who expressed his doubts to the Cusset prosecutor in 2016, the fraud, which has been flourishing since 2001, would undoubtedly continue.
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Trading in false wills
The report follows the suicide of a widower, Daniel M., in September 2015 at his home in Servily (Allier). In the absence of an heir and in the absence of a will other than two previous ones in which the spouses M bequeathed their assets to each other, the succession is declared vacant. Until the appearance of a handwritten will, which a Paris lawyer, Me Georges-Henri L., claims to have received a few days before the suicide and which designates an “old friend” living in England as the legatee. A court investigation into “counterfeiting and use of forgeries” has been opened. It allows the identification of a first group of suspects: the Parisian lawyer, a genealogist from the Rhône, a notary from Chauffailles (Saône-et-Loire) and his former partner Jean-Louis Magnin, who, as the searches will not reveal, do so this is not his first inheritance.
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What to carry great train. According to the investigation report, the former notary, whose daughter is a jockey, was the proud owner of five thoroughbreds on February 13, 2017 and acted as managing partner of six other horses. Checking his passport between the end of 2012 and March 2017 also shows a certain desire to travel and long-distance destinations, as he successively traveled to the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Oman, Thailand, India, the Maldives, Turkey, Brazil, Morocco, Japan and China. Several witnesses mention a man who regularly complains about lack of money but who drives a Rolls Royce or an Audi and owns around thirty apartments.
The former director of Ehdpad and the undertaker
According to the subpoena obtained by the JDD, Jean-Louis Magnin relied on accomplices, old friendships or business relationships, all of whom say they were “manipulated” to steal real estate and life insurance. Me C., the notary of Chauffailles, classified as an “essential cog”, did not derive any benefit from these embezzled inheritances, other than the fees for processing the files, but was “too little attentive” to the many files submitted to his friend , according to the investigating judge. The Parisian lawyer, whose profession “was intended to provide peace of mind”, pocketed just over 88,000 euros in an estate. Twice as much as the genealogist, who nevertheless intervenes in several cases of embezzlement. Just like Sébastien B., the Vichy undertaker who informs Magnin in particular of the death of Daniel M., or even Patrick H., former director of Ehpad in Fréjus (Var), who will realize, for example, that he is even one of the Wrong has deposited wills directly into the pocket of a deceased, a resident of his establishment, for a profit of more than 300,000 euros.
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Martine M., a love affair with Magnin, benefited from almost 200,000 euros, notably through an SCI with the telling name “Alors Heureuse”. A corresponding sum went to Huguette R., 84, a longtime acquaintance of Magnin who is suspected of having written the forgeries (drafts were found in her Paris apartment) because, among other things, she “had the handwriting of an elderly person. Finally, in order to further maximize profits, the alleged crooks are accused of systematically underestimating the value of inheritances or digging up disabled legatees in order to minimize or even avoid inheritance tax.