Franck Bichon, players’ agent, was sentenced to five years in prison including two prisons on Wednesday in Marseille for having scammed Yohan Mollo, ex-midfielder of Monaco and Saint-Étienne, now in Istres (National 3), and looting his heritage. Co-defendant in this case, former player Patrick Blondeau, 55, who played for Monaco and Olympique de Marseille, was however acquitted. Friend and associate of Mr. Bichon, he was prosecuted for concealment of breach of trust, but the Marseille criminal court finally recognized him as a victim.
Now permanently banned from exercising the activities of player agent and asset manager, Franck Bichon, 50 years old, will have to pay 10,000 euros to Yohan Mollo in compensation for his moral damage. He will also have to pay him a provision of 1.4 million euros, pending an expert’s assessment of his actual financial damage. A previous private expertise had estimated the player’s losses at 4.2 million euros between 2011 and 2019.
Aged 20 and a young professional at AS Monaco, Yohan Mollo had, without any written contract, entrusted all his sporting, financial and property interests to Franck Bichon, also manager of a famous brewery in Aix-en-Provence. Using false minutes of general meetings of SCI Maeyo – formed by Yohan Mollo and his sister – Franck Bichon had proceeded, without the player’s consent, to the sale at a loss of six of the nine properties that the player had acquired in anticipation of his retirement from football.
Yohan Mollo, a former French international hopeful now aged 34, also believed he had a life insurance policy worth 22 million euros. During performances by Franck Bichon organized in the premises of a Parisian bank and a La Défense tower, the player was presented with this life insurance statement attesting to this amount. Fake ones, the investigation showed.
When reading the deliberations on Wednesday, President Stéphanie Donjon spoke of real “role games” and mentioned “the extraordinary manipulation capacity” of Franck Bichon on “a young footballer who is totally inexperienced in financial matters”. Today in Istres in National 3, Mollo wore the colors of Caen, Nancy, Saint-Étienne, Zénith Saint-Pétersburg and even Panathinaikos.
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