I landed in Casablanca on April 3, 2024. What I found was worse than anything I could have imagined.
Soufiane Elkabous was waiting at the airport, which was unusual. As we drove away, I noticed we weren’t heading toward my cousin’s place or his, but toward my parents’ home. When I asked why, he said that he was temporarily staying there while his own house was under renovation.
Outside, the house looked completely different. A large “Foundation MJID” sign stood out front. Empty parking spaces were marked as reserved for the foundation. A uniformed guard was posted at the entrance. I was surprised. The foundation had its own offices, and we had never needed guards at the house. Why would managing a presumed non-profit foundation require such protection?
It was overwhelming to enter this house without either of my parents there to greet me. Elkabous’s wife and children were in the living room, and at first, the noise was almost a relief.
I began noticing changes immediately. Very shortly after, Elkabous left, and his wife offered to take me on a “tour.” I found it odd. I had grown up in this house, but I went along out of politeness. A bad feeling began to creep in.
Some furniture had been moved. Other pieces were gone. Rooms had been rearranged. I began to notice more and more items missing. His wife caught my reaction and assured me that all my parents’ belongings had been meticulously packed and stored safely at the foundation. It seemed less and less like a temporary arrangement while their own home was being renovated.
Then came the worst moment of all. We reached my mother’s room. The bedroom my mother left that August morning in 2024 for her daily walk, from which she never returned. Not only had Elkabous ignored my request to leave it exactly as it was, but he had even torn down walls, altered the layout, and removed all her belongings.
How could this be? I broke down. He had erased my mother’s memory. I had wanted to say goodbye to Mom in that room. To whom could I turn? My parents were gone, and the crook I had once asked them to raise and feed had stolen their most personal possessions and had taken possession of their home, my home. And he had done all this while assuring me he was taking care of it for me. He was not only a crook. He was evil personified.
When I confronted him, he lied again and again, each time with a different story. First, he insisted he had only moved in temporarily while his own home was being renovated. Then he claimed he had moved in three months earlier and had wanted to tell me, but did not know how. Finally, he said he wanted to buy the house from me and that he would decide the price.
The next day, it got even worse. Although his wife had assured me that all my parents’ belongings were carefully packed and stored at the foundation, he now claimed he had discarded them all because everything was damaged by moisture. Everything. This, despite his constant access to the house. Imagine that.A lifetime of my parents’ belongings, removed, hidden, and stolen from me. Furniture, pots and pans, plates, cutlery, clothing, art, paintings, photos, appliances, perfumes, jewelry — all gone. Moisture? Really? Why this effort to erase my parents and deny me access to everything that came from them? The very people who had fed and housed him? He was a monster.
I later discovered that he and his family had in fact been living rent-free in my parents’ home for years without my knowledge and without my permission. All the while, the liar was reassuring me that he was watching over it. They had changed everything and even torn down walls, and not only those of my mother’s bedroom.
When he realized I no longer believed him, he changed tactics and reverted to his go-to behavior: that of a thug. He slammed the table in a threatening way and raised his voice at me. “No one will take this house from me,” he screamed.
His mask was off. The crook was determined to steal the house, knowing full well it was not his. My mother had left a copy of the will in the safe he had emptied. He had stolen it, of course. She had also told everyone, family and friends, in Morocco, France, and the USA, that everything she left behind in Morocco would be for me. Even friends from her card club who came to her funeral reminded us she had been preparing it for me.
“Well, it is not your house,” I replied. “It is mine.”
This ungrateful and shameless thug, feeling above the law, began screaming that he, and only he, would decide who owned the house.
He then tried a series of schemes to rob me of the house.
First came the invented debts. For the first time ever, he claimed my parents owed him $700,000 and that he had documents to prove it. He also indicated he had somehow managed to file a lien on the house for that debt in 2019, the specifics of which we will discuss below. As a reminder, 2019 was five years after my father had died and nearly a year after my mother had passed. Neither of them could have signed any debt acknowledgment.
Forgery comes naturally to Soufiane Elkabous. Even more troubling is that he was able to file documents that were clearly forged, obligating people who had died years earlier, and referring to funds that were never transferred. How was such blatant fraud possible?
I pushed back. I told Elkabous that neither of my parents needed to borrow money at that stage of their lives. Dad had business interests and pension from decades of service to the country. As for Mom, His Majesty King Mohammed VI had granted her a generous pension following my father’s death and she had the money from the sale of the two plots of land Dad had left her near Rabat.
And, considering what my mother feared and shared with my aunt, her sister, and with me this crook in the few years before her passing, he would have been the very last person in the world she would have approached if she had needed anything. And, she hadn’t.
Elkabous moved to approach number two. He threatened to create a new will that would reduce my inheritance to only 33 percent of the house. It is hard to follow, I know, as this was years after my mother’s passing and he was talking about creating a will in her name. As he lost his temper while I refused to concede, he was no longer even trying to hide that he was forging documents as he went.
His sense of power came from the fact that he had already generated and recorded forged documents with impunity, could do it again if he chose, and wanted me to know it.
Then he moved to approach number three and said that he alone would decide how much of the house to leave me in the new will, and walked away.
I later learned that the reason he and his “lawyer” had asked me to dissolve ASKA earlier was because the house was still registered in the name of ASKA, the civil corporation my parents had created, and they had been unable to change that.
Before I left Morocco, realizing I would not give in and knowing I was on to him, he offered to “settle.” He proposed paying me one-third of the house’s value in exchange for my signature on the title and my silence. He said he would send the money to the USA through channels he worked with, bypassing the Foreign Exchange Office and using an existing network of money traffickers with which he was affiliated. His network, he said, had a strong presence in Miami, Florida, and a smaller one in New York.
It was unacceptable. It was illegal. It was far from the right amount, and it did nothing to address the entirety of his theft. I would not be paid to remain silent. I no longer wanted him in my parents’ house. He didn’t deserve it. And I would not deal with money traffickers or anyone connected to him. I refused.
After I left Morocco, he began telling people he had purchased the house from me. I find it ironic that he thereby implicitly admitted he could not own it without properly buying it, a fact he now tries to deny. Some asked whether that was true, so let me be clear: I never sold the house to him. He never bought it from me. He does not even pay rent. He is a liar, a squatter, and a thief.
Soufiane Elkabous entered my mother’s bedroom. On the very day she was killed. Before she was even buried. He broke into her private safe. He stole its entire contents. He publicly uses a name that is not his own. He lied deliberately and relentlessly. He forged documents. He created fake debts. He knowingly filed those forgeries in national registries, thereby corrupting the very integrity of those registries. He moved into my parents’ home without any right. He stole everything in it. Everything. He still illegally occupies my family’s home today.
He readily admits the near entirety of these facts, which are also corroborated by evidence.
I hope that Morocco, as a state governed by the rule of law, will ensure that the competent judicial authorities see that this long record of violations of Moroccan law leads to the opening of a transparent investigation and to the conviction of this self-avowed criminal and his accomplices with the full force and to the full extent of the law.
The sooner, the better.
Indeed, would it not be illusory to believe that the actions I have described here only began with the theft of my parents’ house and are limited to it? That they do not concern, for example, the operation of the foundation? Or his other business dealings? That they do not influence the very nature of those dealings?
Based on reactions to these writings, it seems that many have known for a long time what he is, but many have been silenced under threat. I do not judge anyone for that. He is a crook and a thug of the worst kind. But most who knew him knew.
Just this week, someone I have known for over 20 years, who lives in Casablanca, shared my post on Facebook with his clients, then promptly deleted his entire account and disappeared. Others called me directly to express their private support, while apologizing for their public silence due to pressure and threats. Others emailed me messages of support via the site to remain anonymous. I appreciate their support. I respect their request for anonymity. I understand.
But now, for change to happen, it is time for the voices of good to speak louder, to scream louder than the voices of evil. And it is time for justice to be served, fully and without compromise. For Morocco and for all of us.
“Time is always right to do what is right!” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
What most do not know is that the theft of my parents’ inheritance was not limited to the house and its belongings, and the national real estate registries were not the only ones he corrupted. I will cover that soon.