A couple who raised more than €80,000 through three online fundraisers to fund leukemia treatment are on trial in Bordeaux for faking the illness and using the funds for other purposes.

Shaved heads, seizures, false medical certificates: twelve-month suspended prison sentences have been requested against a teacher and her ex-husband, tried on Thursday, September 25, 2025 in Bordeaux for fraud, after having, for five years, faked leukemia and opened several online fundraisers to finance the treatment.

Shaved heads, seizures, false medical certificates: twelve-month suspended prison sentences have been requested against a teacher and her ex-husband, tried on Thursday, September 25, 2025 in Bordeaux for fraud, after having, for five years, faked leukemia and opened several online fundraisers to finance the treatment.

The court accuses the now-divorced couple of having collected more than €82,700 between 2019 and 2024 through three Leetchi fundraising campaigns, the purpose of which was to collect donations to finance the purchase of stem cells to treat the ex-wife's false illness.

According to the prosecution, more than a thousand people, including "celebrities," contributed to these funds, which were then partially used to purchase a smartphone, a garden shed, trips, or even a van.

This 36-year-old teacher, mother of two children, is also being prosecuted for forgery and use of forged documents by falsifying two medical certificates.

The defendant began to fake her illness in 2015 when her partner left for Spain to study physiotherapy, for "fear that he would not come back to her", not feeling "interesting enough".

After a false remission, she continued the deception by feigning relapses at the birth of her children, "feeling tired" and "in difficulty", and disguising false hospital stays using photos with a white background.

Shaved heads, seizures, false medical certificates: twelve-month suspended prison sentences have been requested against a teacher and her ex-husband, tried on Thursday, September 25, 2025 in Bordeaux for fraud, after having, for five years, faked leukemia and opened several online fundraisers to finance the treatment.

The court accuses the now-divorced couple of having collected more than €82,700 between 2019 and 2024 through three Leetchi fundraising campaigns, the purpose of which was to collect donations to finance the purchase of stem cells to treat the ex-wife's false illness.

According to the prosecution, more than a thousand people, including "celebrities," contributed to these funds, which were then partially used to purchase a smartphone, a garden shed, trips, or even a van.

This 36-year-old teacher, mother of two children, is also being prosecuted for forgery and use of forged documents by falsifying two medical certificates.

The defendant began to fake her illness in 2015 when her partner left for Spain to study physiotherapy, for "fear that he would not come back to her", not feeling "interesting enough".

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After a false remission, she continued the deception by feigning relapses at the birth of her children, "feeling tired" and "in difficulty", and disguising false hospital stays using photos with a white background.

“Shame” and “ignorance”

She then made people believe that her son was suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma, believing that the childminder was not paying enough attention to him.

The defendant, who suffered from "precociously constitutive vulnerability" - she had invented a false rape as a teenager - explained in a voice that was sometimes soft, sometimes vibrant, that she "had become entangled in her lies", "not knowing how to get out of it" before "her police custody freed her from it".

Hunched over, head down, she said she "felt a lot of guilt for those who were fighting the disease" and for "having destroyed (her) family" and "the trust of those close to her."

The 37-year-old ex-husband, whom the court accused of never having attended a medical examination or consulted medical documents, assured that he had set up the funds "with complete goodwill" and "in trust".

Described as taciturn, he expressed "his shame" at his "total ignorance of the subject."

"You can accuse him of cowardice, stupidity, and cowardice, but it is not a criminal offense," thundered his lawyer, Géraldine Duran.

The decision was reserved until October 30.