Blackmail coupled with defamation has become a lucrative business for quick profits, as the monthly income of some blackmailers in Canada, such as Hicham Jerando, owner of Tahadi Channel, and Abdelmejid Tounarti creator of Lfercha Facebook Page, has exceeded over 10,000 dollars per month, according to Canadian newspaper “La Presse” in an article published on February 13, 2024.
The blackmail trade has noticeably flourished in the post-pandemic era, as cybercrime indicators have increased due to the growing interest in remote communication technologies because of health precautionary measures, as well as the repercussions of the economic crisis that have driven some individuals to engage in cybercrime under the guise of “defamation followed by blackmail.”
Several personal and objective factors have contributed to the resurgence of this trade, including the fact that it is completely exempt from income tax, corporate tax, and value-added tax. This means that the financial return is net for the blackmailer, with a fraction of the meager amounts received going to intermediaries.
Those involved in these crimes often benefit from the complicity of some employees, users, officials, and competitors who leak data and information, which may not necessarily be accurate, about the targeted person.
An in-depth investigation carried out by sister Arabic-speaking website Barlamane.com determined that one of those blackmailers is Hicham Jerando, a Moroccan citizen based in Canada, and he is at the end of his fourth decade.
Jerando began appearing on social media pages from Canada, publishing videos claiming that he is calling for the fight against the scourge of corruption in Morocco.
Soon, Jerando’s videos multiplied, in which he claimed to expose corruption blatantly, in the courts, bars, ministries, associations, elected bodies, as well as among drug traffickers. He relied on intensive dissemination to reach as many presumed victims as possible, using concise and easily disseminated content due to his lack of depth and precise analysis and to avoid exposure to the audience.
This sudden rise of Jerando led many Moroccan activists to investigate and delve into his digital past, only to find him submerged with a two-year-old online channel exclusively dedicated to providing advice on developing small businesses, as he previously owned a ready-to-wear clothing store in a Canadian province.
After his documented visit to Turkey in 2022, Jerando returned with the criminal concoction to defame under the guise of fighting corruption, coercing victims to quickly engage in his scheme, in which the criminal positivity from the blackmailer meets the negative acceptance from the victims, leading to the completion of the extortion deal.
The blackmailer manipulates the emotions of his account followers with slogans he knows would resonate with Moroccans, such as anti-corruption and financial governance. From this standpoint, he repeated his famous mantra “Greetings to political prisoners” before contorting it into a misleading version “Greetings to the people imprisoned amidst corruption.”
In the autumn of 2023, Jerando specialized in disseminating digital content consisting of short videos that he considered a “denunciation against drug dealers.” He revealed the names of some dealers, accompanied by the names of police members whom he claimed were colluding with drug traffickers, before urging the authorities to fulfill their duty in combating this phenomenon.
Initially, many Moroccans sympathized with this type of content, which garnered significant approval, as they believed Jerando was genuinely trying to neutralize the threat posed to Moroccans by drug threats and others. However, the veil of lies and deceit quickly unraveled, exposing Jerando’s criminal machinations.
The first domino to fall in the game played by Jerando was when he posted numerous videos about a cocaine dealer in Casablanca, only to suddenly delete those tapes in a suspicious manner which then raised doubts about the motives behind the original publication and deletion.
The Moroccan Anti-Defamation and Extortion Observatory reviewed audio recordings and phone exchanges between Jerando and a relative of the drug dealer he was targeting, in which the latter was begging Jerando. She claimed that her relative, the dealer, had recently been released from prison, while Jerando asked her to contact a Moroccan phone number belonging to his friend called “Rachid” and provide him with the money.
All audio recordings exchanged between the intermediary from El Jadida and the dealer’s relatives revolved around money.
Rachid, the intermediary working for Jerando, was presented to the public prosecutor’s office following charges of extortion and defamation. He is currently in prison after being arrested red-handed for participating in extortion activities.
Police proved through his interrogation that he met “at the request of Hicham Jerando” with the drug dealer’s relatives, who handed him only 2,500 MAD under the pretext of a difficult situation after the recent dealer’s release from prison.
However, Jerando initially refused to delete the videos, stating, “2,500 MAD is not enough to delete even a single video,” and demanded that the intermediary Rachid increase pressure on the drug dealer and his family. Ultimately, they succumbed and handed over 7,000 MAD to Rachid. Subsequently, Jerando promptly deleted all videos related to the drug dealer and remained silent thereafter.
Consequently, investigators–along with the Moroccan Anti-Defamation and Extortion Observatory–found out that Jerando had turned his social media channel into a commercial asset in which he purchases and sells people’s reputations under misleading names and false slogans.
One of the files in which Jerando was implicated and which eventually reached the halls of justice involves the case of the drug dealer known as “F,” who was targeted through numerous defamatory videos and tapes despite being incarcerated.
Documents in this case showed that the drug dealer’s wife contacted Jerando in an attempt to stop the series of tapes attacking her imprisoned husband, inquiring about the reason for this deliberate targeting. However, Jerando then informed her that “her husband owes him some money.” The wife then realized that the “anti-corruption crusader” was actually attempting to blackmail her, considering the absence of any prior relationship between her imprisoned husband and Jerando.
The drug dealer’s wife entered into negotiations and bargaining with Jerando, which culminated in the settlement of a sum of 50,000 MAD as payment for silence and the deletion of the videos.
To receive the blackmail payoff, Jerando provided a bank account number in Turkey under the name of a Turkish citizen, requesting the transfer of the funds through money transfer agencies. The wife struggled to send the blackmailer the said sum of money, as many agencies refused to transfer the money due to the lack of relationship between the sender and the recipient–as well as the fear of falling into the pitfalls of terrorist-backed financing–especially as fugitives from the terrorist organization ISIS are present in Turkey.
The wife finally found an agency accepting the transfer of 25,000 MAD into the account of the Turkish citizen. After knowing that the wife sent only half of the agreed amount, Jerando deleted half of the videos and kept the other half.
When the wife contacted Jerando again, he told her that she must complete the agreed-upon amount to enable him to delete the second half of the published videos. The wife found herself obliged to gather the money she used to send to her husband in prison to ensure the payment of the extortion fee demanded by Hicham Jerando. Once Jerando received the full blackmail payoff, he deleted all the videos of the drug dealer.
In a separate event, Jerando refused to defend medical students in their legal and administrative dispute with the Higher Education Ministry, claiming that “…their file does not fall within his jurisdiction or interests.”
According to the legal reports reviewed by Moroccan Anti-Defamation and Extortion Observatory, a fifth-year medical student had reached out to Jerando seeking his “media adoption” of their case but Jerando asked the student if he would be paid for talking about this case.
In the same context, “La Presse” newspaper quoted El Amine Serhani, a journalist specializing in community issues, saying, “Online defamation campaigns have become a business for several members of the Moroccan community in Canada,” confirming that “…they engage in defamation daily and earn more than ten thousand dollars monthly. It has become unbearable.”
Abdelmejid Tounarti, the owner of the “Lfercha” account, became the pioneer of mass defamation against both women and men, drug dealers, court brokers, employees, officials, wives, divorcees, widows, and others.
For Abdelmajid Tounarti, he is a Canadian citizen of Moroccan descent, aged 46, with an educational background in IT. He has never actually worked within his major; instead, he exploited modern communication technologies to facilitate crimes such as defamation, extortion, slander, and reporting fake crimes.
According to his personal records in Canada, Tounarti declared bankruptcy twice since 2018, owing approximately 74,000 Canadian dollars to Canadian banking institutions. Additionally, the Administrative Housing Court convicted him of the obligation to pay a sum of 6,000 dollars to the owner of the apartment he was renting, which he abandoned in March, 2023, without prior notice or payment of rent.
Despite Tounarti’s difficult financial situation, he purchased a Mercedes vehicle in June, 2023, just three months after fleeing from his rented residence without paying the rent, as per the Canadian Registry of Real and Personal Rights for the Province of Quebec (RDPRM).
On August 10, 2023, the Moroccan judiciary sentenced two individuals active in the network of Tounarti to two and three months in prison, respectively, on charges of “participating in extortion, defamation, and obtaining money through defamation and threats to disseminate fabricated pornographic news.”
The director of a bank agency had filed a complaint against the owner of the “Lfercha” channel and his intermediaries after they defamed her and her colleagues with sexual allegations, demanding a sum of 100,000 MAD.
Another blackmailer who follows along the same lines as Jerando and Tounarti is Driss Farhane. His home base lies in Italy’s Brescia region.
Farhane carries numerous criminal records, amounting to 11 files. They encompass scams, fraud, defamation, and slander, and involve serious criminal cases in Morocco, including crimes against the internal and external security of the state, defamation, slander, scams, and fraud to illegally evict apartment-dwellers.
Farhane began his criminal career in Italy when he enriched himself by taking from a charitable association at a mosque, where he had been entrusted as treasurer. Since that date, he permanently abandoned the mosques and specialized in “scamming in the name of religion and spiritual security for Moroccans abroad.”
Farhane claimed that he established an association active within the Moroccan community in Italy. This claim was categorically refuted by a diplomatic source at the Moroccan Embassy in Italy, stating that “Driss Farhan’s association exists just on paperwork and has no presence in reality, and has never officially interacted with Moroccan consular services in Italy.”
Farhane’s name only emerged in national press headlines after he was recently implicated in the scandal of “suspicious funding received from Moroccan officials, targeting constitutional institutions and Moroccan security services.” Investigations by the National Judicial Police revealed that this fugitive in Italy engaged in extortion and defamation in exchange for significant financial transfers, a fact explicitly admitted by the Secretary-General of the Moroccan Community Council Abroad in a post on his personal Facebook page.
This case, now known in the media as the “Boussouf Scandal,” exposed Farhane’s threats to public officials, elected bodies, and employees to publish defamatory articles against them in exchange for financial sums channeled through intermediaries for criminal purposes in the city of Kenitra.
In the Boussouf case alone, investigations have tracked the continuance of extortionate financial transfers from 2019 through March, 2024, with an average transfer rate of around 20,000 MAD monthly. These transactions have occurred at least once every two months, and have amounted to twice the minimum monthly income threshold in Italy.