Two parents who were planning to move into their new home with their five children instead had to pack up and move back in with their parents after falling into the trap of a fraudulent real estate agent who allegedly bilked them out of $48,000.
“It’s crazy how you can’t feel remorse… He wasn’t a bad boy. But he clearly stole from us, and not just us,” complained the father of the family, Damien, as part of the file of a collective that brought together 36 alleged victims of the real estate agent, as reported by Le Parisien. France Live” on Tuesday.
The father of five will have to wait more than a year to perhaps see the color of the 32,000 euros – the equivalent of more than 48,000 Canadian dollars – that he placed in the hands of his friend and real estate agent. Soufyène Mazouz last February as a deposit for the purchase of a new house in Val d’Oise, he complained to French media.
However, the latter would have fled with the money, leaving the two parents and their five children without a place to stay, since they had already signed the sale of their own house and believed that they were ready to move to the other house.
“We still live with my parents,” complained the father, according to French media.
Realizing they were involved in a scam, the family took legal action before realizing they were far from the only ones who had suffered serious financial losses after encountering the agent, according to France Live .
In fact, no fewer than 36 victims were brought together into a collective that claimed a total of 700,000 euros – more than 1,050,000 US dollars – through civil law.
Had the judge last October not postponed the proceedings until December 2024, to the great dismay of the plaintiffs, many of whom would have lost their entire savings, La Gazette Val d’Oise reported on November 10.
In the meantime, the father of the family works hard, for days “angrily, from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.,” trying to renovate an old house in the Val d’Oise himself so he can leave his parents’ lives. House, according to France Live.