Pregnant Influencer Released from Detention in Extortion Case

The Instagram and TikTok star, eight months pregnant, was released under judicial supervision on Thursday morning, reports Le Parisien, which specifies that the 24-year-old woman left the Rouen (Seine-Maritime) detention center after nearly four months of detention. Poupette Kenza is prohibited from leaving French territory and from contacting the alleged victims, and will have to report regularly to the nearest police station.

"The pre-trial detention of Poupette Kenza had been mainly motivated not by the seriousness of the facts but by the lack of guarantee of representation [before justice, editor’s note], her entire life now being in Dubai. It took us four months to repatriate her life to France. Now that this is done, there was no longer any reason for her to be kept in pre-trial detention," explained Me Jérémy Kalfon, the influencer’s lawyer.

Pregnant with her third child, the influencer will be able to follow her pregnancy under better conditions. After her release, she was reunited with her two children repatriated from Dubai. Under her real name Kenza Benchrif, Poupette Kenza is accused of attempting to extort 350,000 euros from Caroline, her former business partner, and Walid, the latter’s husband. She would have used a blackmailer, a certain "Amadou," to threaten the parties concerned.

Caroline and her husband had filed a complaint. The Rouen prosecutor’s office decided to prosecute Poupette Kenza for "attempted extortion of funds in an organized gang" and "criminal association" and requested twenty years in prison against her. Caught out with SMS exchanges with the blackmailer, the social media star ends up accusing her husband, Allan Liehrmann. Arrested on September 23 by the Rouen judicial police as he got off a plane, the latter is still in detention.