Idriss Qibaa, the alleged owner of Unlocked4life, a service that takes control of social media accounts, went on the ‘No Jumper’ podcast to brag about extorting users. Qibaa was immediately investigated by law enforcement and is facing federal charges.
Qibaa allegedly ran the service Unlocked4life, which was marketed as a service for effectively banning and unbanning accounts on Telegram, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.
However, Qibaa admitted on the ‘No Jumper’ podcast hosted by Adam-22 that he was outrightly extorting users by locking them out of their social media accounts and then charging his victims to get the accounts reinstated.
The scammer admitted that “he has over 200 people who pay him monthly to maintain access to their accounts, claiming he makes more than $600,000 a month,” the criminal complaint reads.
During the podcast, Adam-22 drew on the fact that people are regularly exploited by services like Unlocked4life. “I’ve talked to stars who have told me that they’ve paid to get it (social media platforms) back 20 times over and over and over…and I’m like, you realize what’s happening to you, right?” to which Qibaa responded, “You’re getting extorted.”
Qibaa seemed to target individuals with big followings and often locked users out of accounts purely on the basis of disagreements.
In the criminal complaint, it purports that there are at least eight known victims of Qibaa’s extortion scheme.
For example, victim 1, named J.T. in the criminal complaint, supposedly asked for a quote for a username, for which he was quoted between $4,000 to $5,000.
J.T. decided against the deal, and Qibaa became furious, locking J.T. out of his Instagram accounts “theblacklistxyz” and “Caliplug,” which had about 500,000 followers, according to the criminal complaint. Qibaa demanded a payment of $10,000. However, the scammer agreed to receive $8,500 and eventually reinstated J.T.’s access.
Qibaa’s exchanges with victims became more violent, with several of the victims experiencing threats to their lives by the attacker. In certain cases, Qibaa acquired his victim's personal information and threatened to “blast it out.”
Unlocked4life didn’t just hack into users' accounts and take control, it also sold personally identifiable information (PII), including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, names, and addresses, the criminal complaint alleges.
The platform “also offers a service where customers can purchase “TLO” which includes the personal identifying information of someone that can be posted online (doxxing), the criminal complaint alleged.
Qibaa also spammed one of his victims with over 2,000 text messages, threatening to expose her Social Security number. He also told her that she needed to pay $20,000 to get her Instagram account unlocked and to stop being attacked.
The torment wasn’t exclusive to high-profile social media targets; it extended to the people who had “wronged” Qibaa, including his dentist and his realtor.
The scammer threatened both his dentist and his realtor, spamming his dentist's phone with over 700 messages, which included threats against the victim and his family. The realtor experienced racial discrimination at the hands of Qibaa, as he sent the victim “racial slurs,” said 404, who first reported the case.
Qibaa, who goes by the aliases “Dani” and “Unlocked,” spoke on the podcast about what social media has done for his life, ironically disregarding the victims whose careers and potential lives would have been turned upside down.
“Dani” even admits that “anybody that ever tried to say they hate me isn’t on Instagram anymore” when he responds to the podcast host’s claims that people will be “DMing me saying I hate this piece of s**t.”
Adam-22, the host of the ‘No Jumper’ podcast, concludes the “interview” by saying that he’s “very excited to see the fallout from this.”
The “fallout” is that Qibaa is now being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and it has been said that there “is probable cause that Idriss Qibaa has violated Title 18, United States Code, Section 875(c), Interstate Communications.”
According to Cornell Law School, “Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
Qibaa could be looking at a hefty fine or a maximum of 20 years imprisonment for the crimes he seemingly admitted to on the ‘No Jumper’ podcast.
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