A Lebanese man who posed as a secret agent for a decade to swindle millions of euros from his victims was jailed for five years in France on Tuesday.
A court in Versailles, west of Paris, also ordered Dany Hadid to pay €1.3mn ($1.5mn) in damages and interest to six plaintiffs, including an Egyptian restaurant-owner he had reduced to financial ruin.Hadid, 42, was sentenced to a five-year prison term for fraud and money-laundering and further fined €80,000. He has been barred from running companies for the next 10 years.
He had managed to extract large sums for himself and his accomplices from personal and professional contacts by convincing them that he was an intelligence agent who could offer them services in exchange for cash, the court heard.
The money would then be transferred to Hadid, sometimes using opaque Lebanese bank accounts.
Hadid, who lived in Rambouillet west of Paris, denied the accusations, saying he was the victim of a "cabal" launched against him by the alleged victims and his own co-defendants.
His main accomplice, a former musician in a police brass band who worked on the scam as a driver and courier, has already been jailed for two years.
Four other co-defendants including an accounting expert were handed suspended sentences of between six and 18 months.
