A Paris court has found the ringleader and seven other people guilty in the 2016 robbery of Kim Kardashian.
The court acquitted two of the 10 defendants. The sentences being read out by the court president range from prison terms to fines.
With time already served in pretrial detention, none of those found guilty will go to prison.
Nine men and a woman were accused of carrying out or aiding the crime during the 2016 Fashion Week, when masked men dressed as police entered Kardashian's Paris residence, bound her with zip-ties and vanished with $6 million in jewels.
After delivering final statements in court, the defendants were dismissed Friday morning before a verdict was delivered later in the day.
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At the heart of the trial was 69-year-old Aomar Aït Khedache, the alleged ringleader and a veteran of Paris’ criminal underworld.
He got the stiffest sentence, eight years imprisonment, but five of those are suspended. Three others who were accused of the most serious charges got seven years, five of them suspended.
Khedache's DNA, found on the zip-ties used to bind Kardashian, cracked open the case. Wiretaps captured him giving orders, recruiting accomplices, and arranging to sell the diamonds in Belgium. The loot was never found.
Khedache claims he was only a foot soldier. He blamed a mysterious “X” or “Ben" — someone prosecutors say never existed. Khedache asked for “a thousand pardons,” communicated via a written note, according to French media. Other defendants also used their final words to express remorse.
The accused became known in France as “les papys braqueurs” — the grandpa robbers. Some arrived in court in orthopedic shoes and one leaned on a cane. Some read the proceedings from a screen, hard of hearing and nearly mute. But prosecutors warned observers not to be seduced by soft appearances.
The trial was heard by a panel of three judges and six jurors, who needed a majority vote to reach a decision.
The defendants faced charges including armed robbery, kidnapping and gang association.
Kardashian’s testimony earlier this month was the emotional high point. In a packed courtroom, she recounted how she was thrown onto a bed, zip-tied, and had a gun pressed to her on the night of Oct. 2, 2016.
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“I absolutely did think I was going to die,” she said. “I have babies. I have to make it home. They can take everything. I just have to make it home.”
She was dragged into a marble bathroom and told to stay silent. When the robbers fled, she freed herself by scraping the tape on her wrists off against the sink, then hid with her friend, shaking and barefoot.
She said Paris had once been her sanctuary — a city she would wander at 3 a.m., window shopping, stopping for hot chocolate. That illusion was shattered.
The robbery echoed far beyond the City of Light. It forced a recalibration of celebrity behavior in the digital age. For years, Kardashian had curated her life like a showroom: geo-tagged, diamond-lit, public by design. But this was the moment the showroom turned into a crime scene. In her words, “People were watching… They knew where I was.”
Afterward, she stopped posting her location in real time. She stripped her social media feed of lavish gifts and vanished from Paris for years. Other stars followed suit. Privacy became luxury.
Defense attorneys asked the court for leniency, citing the defendants’ age and health. But prosecutors insist that criminal experience, not frailty, defined the gang.
Even for France’s painstakingly thorough legal system, observers commented about how long it took for the case to be tried.
Kardashian, who once said, “This experience really changed everything,” hopes the verdict will offer a measure of closure.
