They promised the owners a peaceful retirement in the meadow for their horses, which they actually sent to the butcher. Two horse dealers were sentenced to thirty months in prison, twenty-four of which were suspended, and a fine of 10,000 euros for fraud, this Monday in Marseille. Also convicted of forgery and aggravated deception and endangering consumers, brothers Mikaël and Sébastien Calichon, two forty-year-olds, will serve their six months in prison at home under electronic surveillance.
Some were unfit for human consumption
At the head of the Espace France Cheval company, the two brothers and the son of the second, sentenced to ten months in prison and a fine of 5,000 euros, bought horses from individuals promising that they would spend their retirement in the field, would be used for hiking or an equestrian center for the disabled. Using false breeder status and false names, the Calichon brothers were accompanied by their grandfather and assured the sellers that their animal would keep the nonagenarian’s mare company.
“Beyond the lie, this speech involves fraudulent maneuvers” constituting a fraud, explained the president, even if the court ruled out the aggravating circumstance of an organized gang. Owners reported that the defendants went so far as to warn them against unscrupulous horse dealers: “They will guarantee that your horse goes to the pasture but, in reality, it goes to the butcher,” they were heard to say. .
Between November 2012 and May 2016, 187 horses were acquired from 133 victim owners. Forgeries were also made on the documents of animals taken to the slaughterhouse, some being unfit for human consumption because they were under treatment, duly notified by their owners. An intermediary who supplied horses to the Calichon brothers was given a ten-month suspended prison sentence for simple deception, like his veterinarian, convicted of complicity.
A European affair
The court also issued bans on exercising any activity in the equine industry for five years and ordered the confiscation of sums seized in cash or from the accounts of the Calichon brothers and their companies, for more than 140,000 euros, as well as several vehicles, vans and trailers. With this judgment, the public health and environment division of the Marseille judicial court closes the judgment of a vast fraud which gave rise to three trials over the last two years.
These procedures stem from an investigation opened in 2013 which uncovered massive falsifications, across Europe, of equine documents, allowing the slaughter of horses unfit for human consumption. Some came from a Sanofi Pasteur laboratory farm which used them to manufacture vaccines and antidotes.