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French student accused of vast FBI hacking arrested in Morocco
Info Obs - Arrested on June 1 at Rabat airport, Sébastien Raoult, a 21-year-old Frenchman from Epinal is claimed by American justice. The FBI suspects him of belonging to a group of hackers who recently hit the headlines. Four other people were reportedly interviewed in France at the request of the United States.
"I had missed Morocco", wrote Sébastien Raoult, on March 3, in a tweet accompanied by a photo taken from the terrace of a restaurant offering a wide view of the sea. A few weeks later, the panorama of this 21-year-old Frenchman has seriously shrunk. Since June 1, this former computer science student at the Epitech school in Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle) has been spending his days in a cell in Tiflet 2 prison, east of Rabat, with seven other fellow prisoners. .
On the day of his arrest, Sébastien Raoult, who had reached the end of his three-month tourist visa, was about to take a flight to Brussels from Rabat airport. After presenting his passport to the police, he was immediately arrested because of an Interpol red card issued against him by a Washington State prosecutor in the United States.
The young Frenchman, from Epinal (Vosges), has been in the crosshairs of FBI agents for several months. The latter suspect him of being "one of the important members" of the ShinyHunters hacker group - a reference to the Pokémon universe -, presented as "prolific cybercriminals" by the American authorities. Appearing in the spring of 2020, these cyberhackers made headlines by offering for sale on the darknet nearly 200 million stolen data after breaking into the computer systems of a dozen companies around the world or by asking for ransoms to their targets. Among the victims mentioned: Microsoft or Tokopedia, a major e-commerce player in Indonesia. An Indian company would also have been asked by the group for the sum of 1.2 million dollars in bitcoins in exchange for the return of its data.
The United States is seeking his extradition on charges of "conspiracy to commit electronic fraud and abuse", "electronic fraud" and "serious identity theft". According to the FBI investigation, these offenses were allegedly committed from French IP addresses, but also more recently from Moroccan IP addresses, which would be linked to Sébastien Raoult. American investigators also reportedly got their hands on conversations attributed to the Frenchman on platforms in which he mentioned the said hacks.
“He firmly denies the facts and claims that his accounts were used without his knowledge”, proclaims the father of Sébastien Raoult. It was friends of his son who came to pick him up at Brussels airport who, not seeing him get off the plane and unable to reach him, warned him of his disappearance. The same evening, he calls the French consulate in Morocco on the emergency number. It was only two days later that he got an answer: his son was arrested at the airport, without being told the reasons for this arrest. “They just told me that it was neither a blood crime nor an attack on state security. We are never prepared for this kind of situation, ”he explains.
“He feels a bit abandoned…”
According to his father, the young Frenchman, currently under extradition, would be imprisoned in "conditions as good as possible in this kind of situation": "Of course, he is a rare bird in this prison, the detainees were mainly there for theft or drugs. But he is fine, he has a steely mind, even if he feels a little abandoned by France”, he explains to “Obs”.
A first extradition hearing was held in recent days. The merits of the case have not yet been discussed.
Aspiring to work in computer security, Sébastien Raoult had decided in December to stop his studies to “run the world”. He who, on social networks, presents himself as a "digital nomad" and would have learned to speak English in front of his computer, according to his father.
In his world tour project, however, we guess the young man was reluctant to visit American penitentiaries. In the United States, Sébastien Raoult risks a 116-year prison sentence for the acts attributed to him. “The extradition request submitted by the United States amounts in fact to exposing him to a life sentence prohibited by article 3 of the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights, editor’s note]”, claims Me Philippe Ohayon, the young man's lawyer.
In France, the alleged offenses would be punishable by a maximum of five years' imprisonment, according to the lawyer. The latter is therefore preparing to request his extradition to France from the public prosecutor of Epinal, where the facts are said to have been committed: “We request that proceedings be instituted in France concerning the alleged facts and the issuance of a request for extradition against him, advance Me Philippe Ohayon. We are not looking for impunity, we are only asking to be judged where we can defend ourselves. »
A letter has just been sent to the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron and to the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti to inform them of the situation of the young Frenchman.
According to our information, four other French people, suspected of belonging to the same group, were recently interviewed in this case by the police officers of the Central Office for the Fight against Crime linked to Information and Communication Technologies. And this in the context of a request for international criminal assistance from the United States dated May 2022. They would also have been the subject of searches.
Contacted by "l'Obs", the Paris prosecutor's office did not respond to our request.
