False Bataclan victim gets four-and-a-half years

A 49-year-old woman who pretended to have been a victim of the Bataclan terror attack on November 13 2015, was yesterday sentenced to four and a half years in prison by the criminal court of Créteil (Val-de-Marne).

The woman, who received €25,000 in compensation and was even employed by a victims’ association, falsified documents in support of her claim – including a bill for the concert at the Bataclan – in order to make it appear that she was present at the venue during the killing. She had previously been convicted three times of fraud.

She made her claim in February 2016, telling police about “the bullets whistling in her ears” in the concert hall, a story that was in fact only a “patchwork” of those of real victims. She had joined the association of victims Life for Paris, created in December 2015, where she presented herself as a relative of a victim.

Her position as a “pillar" of the association allowed her to obtain €25,000 from the Guarantee Fund for Victims of Terrorism and Other Criminal Offences (FGTI), as well as more than €13,000 from health insurance. She was finally employed on a fixed-term contract for nine months, before the association began to have suspicions, and ended up reporting her to authorities in the autumn of 2017.

She also tried to fool the Paris mairie, from which she twice asked for social housing, in vain.