The Fast Times and High Crimes of a Hip-Hop Grifter How did a French rapper afford an opulent lifestyle that led to a massive social media following? Allegedly scamming and swindling his own fans, his friends, and even a Swiss bank.
AMONG SWAGG MAN’S accusers is a French youth extreme-sports coach who was in his early twenties when he began to follow Swagg Man online. That was about a decade ago. He is 32 years old now and lives in a small city in central France. He prefers to remain anonymous, but he’s gone by the pseudonym Pierre in the French media. I can tell you Pierre has broken his collarbone five times pursuing his sport.
In his 2014 release “Billey,” a slang spelling of the French word for cash, he raps out one luxury brand name after another: Louis, Louboutin, Versace, Bentley, Lambo, Cartier, Vacheron, and on and on. He was apparently living the life of a very rich man. Pierre tells me, “I’m not much for luxury, but he seemed to have a fine life.”
His rise to fame began by burning money. Literally. He shot a poor-quality video around 2009 in which he set fire to multiple €500 notes — what looks to be a few thousand euros in all — on a street in Paris while onlookers gaped. Swagg Man claims the millions who watched the video made him enough money to begin recording music videos. Eventually he was able to launch his Swaggman World Music Entertainment production company. “If you don’t have the money, nobody can watch you,” he says.
His apparently self-made fortune and spectacular excess made him an object of media fascination in francophone Europe, and North Africa, too. In a 2015 interview, Swagg Man told the augustthat his real name is “Rayan Sanches” and that his Tunisian-Jewish mother and Brazilian father abandoned him as a child on the streets and that he cycled through foster homes after that.
English script across his forehead reads: “Everyday is my birthday.” He explains to me, “And every day is really my birthday. Because everyday u are blessed, everyday you [are] reborn again.”LOTS OF RAPPERS invent personas. It goes hand in glove with the business. But Swagg Man never dropped his mask, even when he seemed to offer an intimate glimpse of the “real” person behind it to his fans.
A French Italian journalist and author, Oli Porri Santoro, was among the first to report on these controversies surrounding Swagg Man’s life. Porri Santoro grew up near Swagg Man in what he describes as a “poor,” sometimes “dangerous” neighborhood in Nice, and the journalist has spoken to Swagg Man’s best friend from childhood and to his twin sister.
In September 2015, Swagg Man married Lolita Rebulard, a French woman three years younger than him, in Miami Beach. According to journalist Porri Santoro, she may be “the boss” behind the schemes tied to Swagg Man. But Swagg Man insists Rebulard is “a girl from a good family who has never caused anyone a problem, but with whom I am no longer, unfortunately.
After several more months of waiting and increasingly vague promises from Swagg Man that he would soon get his money, Pierre saw a post online describing someone in a similar financial situation with Swagg Man. Pierre contacted the poster, and she told him her story. Pierre finally realized, “He was a con man.”
Then came another request for more help resolving legal troubles. On Sept. 12, 2017, Jean wired along another 2,230 euros. Caught up in the cycle of promises, problems, and money wired away, Jean explains that he felt lost, “like gears turning within gears,” good money chasing bad. After the fourth time giving Swagg Man money, “he disappeared.” Finally, Jean says, “I knew it was a con. Everything became clear. Years of savings gone. I wanted to help my brother. I was devastated.
Shortly before Christmas, the banker copied out a few clients’ online-banking-access information and passwords. Having alerted the clients to a system upgrade that would shut down their online access, on Dec. 20, he says, “I disabled those e-banking accesses and made the wire transfers.” Alerted to a possible crime, the Tunisian central bank blocked his account until the matter could get clarified.
Swagg Man says to me, however, that he traveled to Tunisia at the behest of his lawyer there, who said he needed to answer the money-laundering complaint. “I was not afraid because I have nothing to hide,” he insists. Jean, the trainer who wanted to make money to help his sick brother, traveled to Tunisia, too. In October 2019, he finally stood before Swagg Man. “He cried,” Jean recalls. “He knew he was going to prison. I had all the proof.” But due to Covid, the 20 victims pressing charges would have to wait months for a final judgment — and then justice would be even further delayed.
He quickly realized, “he attacked victims.” Cheikh-Rouhou now believes “he must be stopped. There are too many victims, too many poor victims who lost everything.” in april 2020, with her husband in legal limbo in Tunisia, Lolita Rebulard was introduced by a mutual acquaintance, a lawyer working on Swagg Man’s behalf, to an older French husband-and-wife team who own and operate businesses in Tunisia. Embarrassed by their experience, they ask that I not identify them by name, so I’ll call them Hugo and Catherine. I spoke to them in French at their home in Tunisia with their lawyer, Wassim Benzarti. Rebulard told the couple about her husband’s troubles.
But there was no apartment. That luxury property wasn’t purchased for the couple — the apartment hadn’t even been up for sale. According to the couple’s attorney, Swagg Man and Rebulard instead directed the couple’s money get wired to AAA Plus Financial Group, a firm owned by Johnny Previlus. Swagg Man tells me Previlus is “my accountant.” In texts to me, Previlus at first says Swagg Man “is not in my client or friends circle.
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