Carine Maertens said: "We let ourselves be sweet-talked by sponsors, team directors, managers, architects, accountants, tax advisers, bankers, investment advisers, doctors. We believed all these people. We believed them because they dressed well and they’d been to school and they could talk well. We had no experience with money, fame, celebrity. We built far too large a villa, we borrowed money until we were raw, we invested in businesses we knew nothing about. We were honest people who trusted others, who never knew there was such nastiness in the world. By the time we realised what was happening, our bank accounts had been plundered. We had a chic villa and not a franc between us".