A Tunisian couple says ‘Swagg Man’ ripped off millions to invest in Miami properties

He was called Iteb Zaibet at birth, but he never liked the name. For years, he has gone by his stage name “Swagg Man.”

The French rapper — tatted from head to toe with the Louis Vuitton logo, Al Pacino’s “Scarface” mug and lipstick smooches, among other images — has a sizable social media following in France, Tunisia and other parts of Africa, despite flying under the radar in the United States.

Still, his notoriety stretches across the Atlantic to Florida. And to those who consider themselves victims of his infamous betrayals, they view him as less Swagg Man and more Con Man, according to court records filed overseas and in Miami.

His detractors say the fame-craving rapper has exploited his online celebrity status to snooker dozens of mostly Europeans and Tunisians out of millions of dollars. He has been convicted twice of committing fraudulent financial schemes in Tunisia, but has served no prison time, court records show.

High-end Miami real estate involved

Among the rapper’s most ardent accusers: a Tunisian couple who own a textile business and claim in a Miami federal lawsuit that Swagg Man and his French wife duped them into investing $1.6 million in a fake South Florida real estate deal. The suit accuses them of stealing the couple’s investment money and using it to buy two high-rise luxury condos on Biscayne Boulevard, a Port St. Lucie mansion and a Lamborghini convertible.

Patrick Muller and Mouna Bouzid compelled Tunisian authorities to prosecute Swagg Man and his wife in absentia, leading to their conviction in 2022 and a three-year sentence — punishment they have not served. But Muller and Bouzid have struggled to make headway with their Miami civil case against him and his wife because the two left Miami and couldn’t be served with legal papers last year.

“He destroyed our family,” Mouna Bouzid told the Miami Herald in a recent interview. “All we want is to stop him from doing this ever again to anyone else.”

The Tunisian couple said the only reason Swagg Man and his wife were excused as defendants in their case is because they fled Miami to avoid facing liability. The couple said Swagg Man has a knack for staying one step ahead of the law, referring to him and his wife as “fraudsters, thieves” and “criminals” in depositions.

The Tunisian couple aren’t the only ones seeking justice. Last year, a Tunisian court found him guilty of defrauding 20 other victims in alleged financial scams. In absentia, he received a 20-year sentence, a year for each victim, records show.

Swagg Man, 37, who married French native Lolita Rebulard, 34, a decade ago in Miami, has lived on and off in France, Tunisia, South Florida and, until recently, Mexico. In an Instagram message to a Miami Herald reporter this week, he denied the Tunisian couple’s allegations, describing them as “vampires.”

He told the Herald that he has returned to Paris, though he still misses Miami, where he first lived in the North Miami area and then downtown on Biscayne Boulevard for several years. On his Instagram account, Swagg Man says he fell in love with the Magic City after seeing “Scarface,” the over-the-top movie about a trigger-happy Cuban immigrant, played by Al Pacino, who realizes his American Dream by scoring big as a cocaine kingpin.

Swagg Man falls for Miami

“Miami – because it’s not just my city, it’s where I found myself,” Swagg Man posted last month on his Instagram account, which drew 9,455 “likes” and has a million followers. “Florida gave me the chance to become who I am today, and for that, I’m forever grateful.

“Scarface – it’s more than just a movie to me. When I was in prison in France from 2009 to 2011, that film became a symbol of hope and determination,” he added, without saying why he was behind bars. “It gave me the strength to dream of a new life in Miami once I was free.”

In another Instagram post in July, Swagg Man exuded a sense of freedom once again after a Miami federal judge threw out the Tunisian couple’s case against him and his wife, though on a technicality. The case is still going forward against other defendants.

“It is with great pleasure and honor that I inform you that I have just been dismissed from the federal RICO case that was … fabricated against me,” Swagg Man wrote, referring to the Tunisian couple’s Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act case in Miami.

“What this Tunisian-French industrial couple did against me with the help of their acolytes!! Me, as well as the people who work for me, as well as all my businesses are out of danger!! Their goal was to extract as much money as possible from me in Tunisia, by carrying out extortion, basically!! When it didn’t work, they made me look like a criminal and a crook. ... ”

Reached through his Instagram account, Swagg Man told the Herald this week that the Tunisian couple initially claimed he bilked them out of their investments in cryptocurrency, not just real estate. “They change their story like socks,” Swaggman wrote in a message. “These people are vampires. They are ready to do anything for money!”

It seems hard to fathom how the Tunisian couple, Patrick Muller, 68, and Mouna Bouzid, 51, who own a textile company that does business with high-end French clothing brands, ever crossed paths with Swagg Mann.

According to a lengthy Rolling Stone Magazine article on the rapper , Swagg Mann was born in Nice, France, to parents who emigrated from Tunisia in North Africa. He told the magazine that he and his father didn’t get along, leading to their estrangement.

He said he was a good dancer as a child, loved music and learned to play instruments, “thanks to the streets.”

But he said in his late teens, he got into trouble for possession of cocaine and spent time in a French prison, an account that may not be true, the magazine reported. It was there that he said he had the epiphany about the movie “Scarface.”

“His rise to fame began by burning money. Literally. ” Rolling Stone reported in The Fast Times and High Crimes of a Hip-Hop Grifter .

“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,” wrote Marc Wortman, the author of the June 2023 piece.

Swagg Man said the video put him on the map and generated enough money to launch his Swaggman World Music Entertainment production company.

He released his first album, Swagg Man Posey, in 2014, and another, MST, the following year, while going on tour and performing at clubs. But neither album sold well, nor did he cross over from French- to English-speaking audiences, according to Rolling Stone.

Online profile takes off

Still, his “outrageous Swag Man persona” boosted his online profile, with his songs streaming more than 73 million times, according to Distro Kid.

He even started his own fashion line, Posey Bros.

Obsessed with new wealth, high-end watches, exotic cars and designer labels, Swagg Man tattooed himself with Versace, Louis Vuitton and MCM logos, as he tried to remake his identity.

He turned into a media fascination, doing interviews with Le Monde, the influential Parisian newspaper. In a 2016 appearance on France’s Canal Plus television, he said his most meaningful goal in flaunting his lifestyle was to prove that “anyone can make it.”

But the Rolling Stone article also revealed a nefarious side of Swagg Man’s flamboyant personality, detailing allegations in court cases about his swindling of unwitting fans and his laundering of millions from a Swiss bank on the dark web.

Paid his bail to ‘save his life’

Mouna Bouzid, the wife of the textile manufacturer, told the Herald that she came to learn about Swagg Man from TV news coverage in 2019 when he was being held in a Tunisian jail and through an attorney representing him. The attorney, referred to her through mutual friends, persuaded Bouzid that Swagg Man was wrongly accused of fraud and money laundering and needed help posting bail to get released from jail.

The lawyer then introduced her to the rapper’s wife, Lolita Rebulard, who came across as a demure French woman, the opposite of her husband. She told Bouzid that she was financially struggling and became infected with the coronavirus while Swagg Man was in jail, so Bouzid said she sent meals to her and sent a doctor to her home. In turn, she painted a sympathetic portrait of her husband, who has citizenship in both France and Tunisia.

“They said he was the victim, that he was innocent, and I believed them,” Bouzid said in an April 2024 deposition in her Miami lawsuit, explaining that she paid Swagg Man’s bail “to save his life.”

“And when you do something like that for someone, it’s just impossible that they could try to hurt you like that,” Bouzid said in her deposition. “And I helped him get out of prison, so it was just unthinkable that they could do something so despicable to us after all of the help that I provided them.”

During the deposition, Bouzid talked about her husband’s textile business and how the family name “Muller” was known throughout Tunisia. She said the family contributed ventilators to hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic and manufactured 100,000 protective masks.

“My husband and I built our fortune in a way that was clean and in a way that was honest,” Bouzid said during the deposition.

Bouzid said that when Swagg Man was released from jail in June 2021, he and his wife wanted to meet with her and her husband, Patrick Muller, for the first time. In part, it was to thank the Tunisian couple.

Bouzid said Swagg Mann proposed doing business together, including developing a clothing line with the backing of Muller’s textile company to sell his own brand of jeans, T-shirts and caps in the United States. Nothing came of the venture, however.

Bouzid said Swagg Man also suggested that she and her husband invest in bitcoin, but she said they weren’t interested— an assertion that the rapper disputes, claiming he set up an account for her on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange.

Toward the end of 2021, Bouzid and her husband started talking about investing in real estate in Paris to build a nest egg for their family, including two teenage daughters.

When Swagg Man and his wife learned about their financial plans, Bouzid said, they began shifting the Tunisian couple’s investment focus from Paris to Miami. Swagg Man and Rebulard were married in Miami in 2015 and lived there on and off for a few years, including buying a modest apartment in North Miami and then a luxury condo at 888 Biscayne Blvd., before they had met Bouzid and Muller in Tunisia.

Boasts about Miami real estate expertise

Swagg Man turned on his exuberant charm, saying he knew the ins and outs of the Miami real estate market and had connections there.

Bouzid said Swagg Man and his wife touted that they owned a business called Luxury Properties Inc., which bought and sold investment real estate in Florida. They wanted to give the Tunisian couple an opportunity to cash in with them, she said.

“They also mentioned that because of all of the wonderful things you’ve done for us, this will be our way of repaying you,” Bouzid said in her deposition. “And through this investment, we’ll be able to help you earn money through real estate in the United States better than in France.”

She and her husband, a native of France, had never been to the United States. During his deposition in April, Muller, said: “I didn’t know Miami at all.”

To familiarize them with the area, Swagg Man and his wife showed the Tunisian couple photos of potential apartments, condos and homes in South Florida.

In his deposition, Muller said Swagg Man claimed to have contacts in the real estate business in Miami and could make all the arrangements for him and his wife to invest in the market. Muller said Swagg Man also pressured the couple to move quickly and put down their money.

“We had sort of this environment of trust that we had built up, and it was an investment that had to be made quickly,” Muller said.

Asked if he trusted Swagg Man to handle the logistics of the investment, Muller said: “No. So I trusted his wife, Lolita. And Iteb [Swagg Man] had attorneys here [in Tunisia]. So there was a whole team here that was encouraging this investment.”

The Tunisian couple said Swagg Man pitched a plan to invest their money in his real estate fund’s first purported purchase: a home at 5421 Bayview Dr. on near a waterway in Fort Lauderdale, according to the lawsuit filed in Miami.

He told them that he was in touch with the seller of the property, “Florida Luxury Realty Corp.,” and presented the couple with documents purporting to show the listing, including wire instructions to deposit their money in a Wells Fargo Bank account in the name of a company called AAA Plus Financial Group. It was described an an escrow agency affiliated with the realty firm, according to the suit.

Bouzid and her husband said they were still debating whether to do the deal, but Swagg Man assured them it was legitimate. Muller then made a series of wire transfers totaling $1.6 million to AAA’s Wells Fargo account between November 2021 and January 2022.

“I had to make this immediate transfer in order not to miss out on a really good deal,” Muller said in his deposition.

The Tunisian couple would eventually discover they were duped — that there was no real estate fund, no Fort Lauderdale property for sale and no escrow agency, according to their lawsuit. The investment deal was all “fake,” their suit says, claiming that AAA was a shell company affiliated with South Florida real estate associates of Swagg Man and his wife.

In the suit, the Tunisian couple included exhibits such as AAA’s bank statements and Swagg Man and his wife’s real estate purchases under the corporate name Luxury Properties Trust to show how they allegedly diverted the couple’s investment without their knowledge or approval.

Florida corporate records list Iteb Zaibet, Swagg Man’s birth name, as the president of Luxury Properties Trust. His wife is also a beneficiary.

High-end condos on Biscayne

For example, the couple’s suit says that on Dec. 7, 2021, $100,000 was transferred from AAA’s account on behalf of Luxury Properties Trust as an initial down payment on the trust’s purchase of a $1.4 million unit in the Marquis Miami condo tower at 1100 Biscayne Blvd. Later that month, an additional $636,985 was wired from AAA’s account to close on the acquisition.

In another example, on Dec. 10, 2021, $140,000 was wired from AAA’s account on behalf of the Trust as an initial down payment on its purchase of a $735,000 unit in the Blue Marina condo tower at 888 Biscayne Blvd. The following month, on Jan. 18, 2022, $466,396 was transferred from AAA’s account to close on that purchase.

In another instance, the couple’s suit says that between Dec. 23, 2021, and Feb. 11, 2022, more than $543,700 was transferred from AAA’s account for the purchase of a $1.33 million estate in Port St. Lucie —although this transaction seems to have no direct connection to Luxury Properties Trust.

Then in May 2022, an unknown sum of money was transferred from AAA’s account so Swagg Man could buy a 2017 Lamborghini Huracan LP 580-2 convertible. At that time, the retail price of the Italian-made luxury SUV was $262,350.

Miami attorney David Reiner, who represents Luxury Properties Trust — but not Swagg Man and his wife individually — said the Tunisian couple have failed in federal court and in earlier state court actions to freeze the trust’s condo assets.

“In every instance the Courts have found no nexus — no link — between the properties owned by the Trust and the moneys allegedly invested or loaned by the Muller’s,” Reiner said in a statement provided to the Herald. “This is a dispute between French/Tunisian parties. It should be resolved in the courts in France or Tunisia.”

A Moroccan lawyer and Miami private investigator representing the Tunisian couple said that Swagg Man and his wife have a history of swindling dozens of people in France, Tunisia and other foreign countries and moving their money into banks and real estate in Florida.

Lawyer Wassim Benzarti said that he and Patrick Muller visited South Florida in late 2022 to reach out to local, state and federal authorities about Swagg Man’s alleged scheme to bilk him and his wife out of their $1.6 million investment, but they made no progress.

“He obviously moved this money to Miami and bought real estate and a Lamborghini,” said David Bolton, a longtime private investigator. “I would think that multiple law enforcement agencies in South Florida would be interested in his activities.”

The Tunisia couple said in their depositions that they just want Swagg Man and his wife to pay for betraying them.

“My husband and I have experienced a great injustice,” Bouzid said, “and we are waiting for somebody to show us a degree of humanity and justice.”