He might have literally burned money and flaunted supercars on social media to gain followers, but ‘Swagg Man’ is just another conman, accused of having scammed a large number of fans to the tune of millions of dollars. 

Following his arrest in July 2019, French-Tunisian social media influencer Swagg Man, whose real name is Iteb Zaibet, was on Monday handed a five-year prison sentence for a separate fraud and money laundering case, AFP reported.

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Authorities seized nearly $6 million from his accounts, with a number of other probes underway in both France and Tunisia. 

On social media, Zaibet presented a complex origin story, claiming he was born to a Jewish-Tunisian mother and a Brazilian father, was abandoned and forced to live on the streets, from where he rose to fame and success today. 

However, according to relatives, Zaibet was born in Nice to a Franco-Tunisian family.  

The tattoo-covered, jewellery-clad internet sensation rose to fame in the early part of last decade, Zaibet, in his social media story line, started out as a DJ in Dubai. His lifestyle gained him thousands of followers, and he continued to flex money, bling and cars. 

In an interview with Le Monde in 2015, he defined himself as a “buzz that lasts” and claimed he “made money through the net, then with real estate, in Miami and Dubai”. In a television interview next month, he said he wanted to prove “anyone can make it”. 

However, an outpour of fans claiming to have been scammed by Swagg Man exposed the truth, first via his Facebook page, and then through a French assiciation called Swagg Auxilium. 

According to the association, the dozens of victims are mainly fans, aged 13 to 35, who had turned to their idol for advice on how to get rich.

He is accused of having offered them lucrative investment opportunities, as well as asking for funds to support humanitarian causes or to pay for bail.

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Some of them pressed charges, but “the scams targeted different jurisdictions, so it was almost impossible for security services to gather enough elements in their investigations”, according to Auxilium.

In 2019 and 2020, 21 alleged victims claiming a total loss worth more than $1.7 million, filed a suit in Tunisia, one of their lawyers, Mohamed Ben Brahem, told AFP.

The sums allegedly extorted from French, Tunisian, Algerian and Canadian nationals range from a few thousand to several hundred thousand euros each, he said.

Swagg Man, who appears on Instagram living it up in Miami, was convicted this week — along with a Swiss national, who remains at large — over two suspect transfers worth more than six million euros paid into his Tunisian account from Switzerland, said Mohsen Dali, a deputy public prosecutor.

Swagg Man’s lawyer, Mahdi Louzir, said the money was to be used to buy industrial machinery and his client was an intermediary in the deal.

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As for the fans’ complaints in the separate case, they were business losses, the defence argues.

Investigations into 19 of the complaints have been completed and a trial should open soon, according to Ben Brahem.

There is also a warrant out for Swagg Man’s arrest in France.

It was issued in October 2019 as part of a judicial investigation for fraud, breach of trust, counterfeiting, forgery and falsification of records, said the prosecutor’s office in the French city of Nanterre.

Swagg Man’s social media accounts have gone silent since July 4, 2019, when he posted a photo taken in front of a courthouse in Tunis.

“If this is my last photo, I will miss you very much,” he told followers.