Pimping, Forgery and a Cannabis Plantation Invite Jail-Time

Property Fraud to Escape a half million loan repayment 

“Oh what a tangled web we weave 

When first we practice to deceive”

This could describe the actions of an East European medical professional who had managed to secure a loan of just under a million euros to buy a property just over the border from Monaco. Placing the property in a Company he repaid approximately half the loan refinancing the remaining nearly half million euros with another bank. 

Before the Court the mortgage lender argued to be compensated for the loan-default after the owner, by falsifying documents, transferred the property to his wife’s company and then disappeared. Following this deception the bank had no way of taking possession of the property or finding the owner. It was evident that the culprit behind this fraud had deliberately forged documents to illegally transfer the property to escape the half million euro loan repayment and avoid payments to the tax authorities who he had also deceived. 

In the end an arrest warrant and a year in jail would be the criminal’s fate … and the bank would proceed with a civil action to recover the loan. 

A Personal Cannabis Plantation Feeds a Long Term Addiction  

Entrepreneurial and efficient in one sense and idle and paranoid in another. 

A Monegasque had successfully cultivated a virtual forest of cannabis plants in his apartment to feed his habit of several joints a day. It was a well executed plan to supply his addiction with no intent to sell the drugs. Now in his fifties living off a small income and out of work for almost two decades, he had an unusual lifestyle of sorts but one that suited him. Except his personal miracle evaporated when a neighbour smelled the cannabis and reported him. 

The Judge was concerned that each day he was driving under the influence of the cannabis which was clearly in breach of the law. Having established that he was not trading the cannabis the Court was lenient issuing a suspended sentence of 6 months with extended probation and mandatory care for his addiction. 

A Rare Case of Aggressive Pimping in Monaco 

A rare case of pimping in Monaco resulted from the police encountering a man in his early thirties smoking a joint in his car parked outside a luxurious hotel in the early hours of the morning. A give-away were two ladies’ bags in the back of the car with prostitution paraphernalia inside. At the same time the police had intercepted two young girls in the Principality who confessed to exchanging sexual favours for 500 euros. It turned out the man was lodging the girls, himself too, in an AirBnB near Monaco and pimping them. Envelopes of cash and a video of the girls nude with cash were presented as evidence. 

The man had a long criminal record in France including a conviction for pimping. 

Denial after inconsistent denial were rejected by the Court which issued a strict sentence of one year in prison.