In Pau, a predator was convicted for robbing and exiling a defenseless nonagenarian.

Matthieu Tabaud, a 46-year-old from Bordeaux, was tried for two days before the criminal court of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques in Pau for five offenses: arrest, kidnapping, unlawful confinement, exploitation of a vulnerable person, and money laundering. The case began in 2019 when the accused targeted Jeanne Narbout, an 88-year-old widow living in the Béarn region, who had no children or close family. He presented himself as a wine salesman. After gaining her trust, he convinced her to leave her home and entered into a civil partnership with her in February 2020, subsequently obtaining a notarized power of attorney over all her financial assets. The fraudulent activities began two weeks later.

By seizing her savings, pension, and bank card, the accused gradually made the elderly woman financially dependent on him, eliminating her free will and freedom of movement. In 2022, he forcibly took her to Morocco, where investigators found her confined to a room of approximately three square meters at the home of his new partner's family. The total amount embezzled reached €830,000, according to the police. The alarm was finally raised in 2023 by a business intermediary who, after mistakenly receiving a copy of the civil partnership agreement, alerted a distant nephew of the victim.

Sixteen years requested, denials maintained to the end

In court, Matthieu Tabaud refuted all the accusations, conceding only to "mismanagement of Jeannette's assets," describing the nonagenarian as his "godmother in spirit" and claiming he had gone to Morocco to set up a call center. The prosecutor requested a sixteen-year prison sentence with an eight-year minimum term, deeming the defendant guilty of all the charges.

Jeanne Narbout died in 2025 at the age of 94 in a retirement home in Casablanca. The Bayonne notary, initially implicated as an accomplice, was cleared of all charges by the investigating chamber. The criminal court ultimately sentenced Matthieu Tabaud to eleven years' imprisonment.