swindled out of 25,000 euros, a victim of the “Madoff of Maine-et-Loire” says

Guillain Méjane and his associate are on trial starting this Monday in Paris. More than 50 victims accuse them of fraud, via the implementation of a Ponzi scheme.

He was nicknamed “the Madoff of Maine-et-Loire”, in reference to the famous American crook who set up a Ponzi scheme for almost fifty years in the United States. A 41-year-old man is on trial from this Monday, January 8 before the criminal court in Paris, alongside an accomplice, accused of having stolen 15 million euros.

In 2011, at the age of 29, Guillain Méjane promised, on the brochure of his fund management company, “high yield investments”, and interest at 11%. For the clientele, this man who looks like an ideal son-in-law relies on the networks in Anjou of his childhood friend and associate, Gaëtan Odart de Rilly d’Oysonville, or even on his own friendships.

“How was I not more clairvoyant than that?”

These two sons from good families will especially target people from the Angevin aristocracy, like this disabled woman, who will never see the 25,000 euros she invested again. “He’s really a very well-bred young man, with a lot of wit. He has a child’s smile, completely cute. He is the caricature of a crook”she says.

“I was very angry with him, for being fooled by a so-called friend. And the second layer of anger is the one that I harbor against myself, that is to say that I say to myself ‘ but what a bitch!’.”

A victim of the Guillain Méjane scam

at franceinfo

“Of course lending money to a company without being a shareholder is very strange, and of course this double-digit return is too good to be true. How could I not have been more clairvoyant as that?”asks this victim.

Like her, at the start, no one is suspicious. Everyone is reassured by the weekly reports of the young manager, who ends up claiming computer hacking to explain his bankruptcy. Fifteen million euros of investments were lost. In total there are more than 50 victims. Meanwhile, Guillain Méjane was leading the way: Ferrari, Aston Martin, wedding in Italian Piedmont and honeymoon in the great African parks…