The influencer and owner of a communications and influencers agency based in Antibes, Magali Berdah, had claimed to have received a large number of hate messages of an anti-Semitic nature or death threats. Thirteen people were arrested throughout France on Wednesday October 19 as part of an investigation opened by the national center for the fight against online hate (PNLH) of the Paris prosecutor’s office. According to franceinfo which revealed the information, these people were arrested in a dozen departments, from the Paris region to Corsica, via Gironde and Sarthe. At the end of their police custody, twelve of them (11 men and one woman) received a summons to be tried by the criminal court in 2023 for “cyber-harassment and death threats, some of which because of the victim’s religion.”
Cyber harassment
These online threats are linked to accusations made on the internet by rapper Booba. The artist claimed that many customers who purchased products promoted by influencers either never received their order or received counterfeit items. Booba, followed by seven million subscribers on Instagram and nearly six million on Twitter, had launched the hashtag #influvoleurs. The rapper cited Magali Berdah as one of the actors in this system that he wants to denounce. According to Magali Berdah, this initiative by Booba caused him to receive hateful messages on social networks. She also obtained the closure of the singer’s Instagram account for cyber-harassment (the decision was invalidated by the courts on October 3, but the account remains inaccessible).
Another investigation was opened on September 6
for “misleading commercial practices” by the Grasse prosecutor’s office after a complaint against X de Booba for fraud. The rapper aims there again “a complex and organized scam system, centralized by the company Shauna Events (Editor’s note, the agency headed by Magali Berdah)”.