This glamorous couple would have defrauded dozens of victims

The fall is harder when you fall from above. This cruel maxim, the Geneva financier Robert L. had any leisure to meditate in prison. Since May 2024, the elegant fifties have been in preventive detention, in a case of fraud of exceptional magnitude.

According to our information, between 60 and 70 victims filed a complaint against him, after having entrusted him at least 15 million francs. Funds that the couple formed by Robert L. and his wife, a large buyer of luxury and haute couture items would have dilapidated.

A criminal investigation was opened in Geneva. Robert L. has just seen his detention extended until next April. He is presumed innocent until the end of the procedure. As for his wife, she was questioned, but was not warned at this stage.

Véronique Jannot among the victims

Described as reassuring and cultivated, Robert L. seduced various environments, in Switzerland and France. Some customers had given him the savings of a life – sometimes hundreds of thousands of francs. And up to 1.5 million for a retired couple who had known him since his adolescence.

“Some have thought of committing suicide, others must live in their car or in their minibus,” said one of the investors who filed a complaint against Robert L.

Among the French complainants are naturopaths and lovers of esotericism. As well as actress Véronique Jannot, who did not respond to our requests. She would not wish to express himself on the case, like almost all of the other victims. “As it stands, I am unable to comment on this current procedure,” says Paul Hanna, a Geneva lawyer who represents dozens of customers from Robert L.

Everyone believed to place their money in a profitable manner, thanks to a financial algorithm, or “robot”, presented as infallible by Robert L. and supposed to place their funds on the currency market.

The yield announced, from 6 to 12% per year, seemed reasonable. For years, the Geneva financier has paid regular interests to certain customers. He reassured others by sending “newsletters” supposed to attest to his performance.

Robert L. claimed to manage his wife’s fortune. And make a “favor” to its customers, authorizing them to invest with their algorithm. He gave the names of a lawyer and Geneva notaries, supposed to serve as guarantors for his operations. Contacted, one of them says that his name was used without his knowledge.

30,000 francs in rent per month

According to the complainants and the public prosecutor, the algorithm and its allegedly infallible investments were a lure. Robert L.’s wife would have no fortune – it was, according to him, an invention on his part. Customers’ money would first have served to fuel the couple’s luxury frenzy.

An Instagram account today inactive, Upgraadegive an idea of ​​his lifestyle: vacation in palaces, first class flights, caviar and champagne, Vuitton bags and Gucci slippers, the couple did not refuse anything. He rented large apartments in Paris and Geneva, for around 15,000 francs per month each. Sums to which were added approximately 100,000 francs of monthly credit card expenditure.

With the Swiss taxman, Robert L. was less generous. After announcing his departure from Switzerland for the United Kingdom, he had domiciled in Dubai, where he had created a company, Fast Paradigm, thus avoiding taxes in Europe. But he continued to live especially in Paris and Geneva, according to several sources.

The party suddenly ended on May 14, 2024, when the Geneva police picked Robert L. at home in the early morning. Jewelry, furs and watches were seized with the homes of the couple and in safes. For more than a million francs, according to our information. But it is not known how much money the victims will be able to recover at the end of the procedure. “Apart from luxury objects, nothing remains,” confide relatives of the file.

Robert L.’s wife says she discovered the scam after the arrest of her husband. “She learned with amazement and sadness of her actions after her placement in detention,” said her lawyer, Jamil Sousssi.

Overgrowth

The chronology of the case challenges. An Italian client, who had entrusted him with a million euros, filed a complaint against Robert L. in November 2021 already. Why then took two and a half years to stop him?

According to our information, police and justice have taken time to understand that fraud did not concern one, but dozens of people. Chronic work overload of Geneva prosecutionwith a change of prosecutor along the way, did not help. Asked, the public prosecutor refuses to comment, “the procedure being underway,” said his spokesperson, Olivier Francey.

Intriguing course

Today, Robert L. is still convinced of the virtues of his algorithm, or financial “robot”. “I have never knowingly wanted to act at someone’s detriment,” he said in hearing on December 12. “I could not predict that things were going to develop negatively with my algorithm.”

His lawyer, Eric Beaumont, indicates that “it is an algorithm, developed over many years by ML, scheduled to send him a signal both sound and visual when a particular stock market operation (in this case trading futuresor term contracts) was interesting to perform. In simulation, the results were interesting. “

For François Canonica, lawyer for several complainants, “there are two categories of financial delinquents: those who land when they are arrested, who become aware and sometimes even regret. And those who do not shine, and who believe or pretend to believe, including in prison, their good faith and their honesty. ” Robert L. is, according to him, in the second category.

His life course has something to intrigue. In 1995, a German magazine asked him while he was a student in Saint-Gall. He assumes wanting to integrate the Swiss “economic elite”. At the end of his studies, we find him at the head of Swissflirt, a platform of meetings by SMS.

It was at the turn of the millennium that he would have met his wife. From that moment, Robert L. no longer seems to have had any public presence. It was not until 2014 that it would have started raising funds from its customers – with the results that we know.

“In life, everything has a price,” he wrote on Instagram in 2017. In his case, this price to pay will undoubtedly be a lawsuit, the date of which remains to be determined.

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