Justin Bieber, DrakeCardi B, Eminem or Travis Scott… All these artists posted a new clip on their respective YouTube channel on Tuesday April 5 at around 10:30 a.m.
Finally, that’s what their millions of subscribers first believed. But on closer inspection, it was actually a massive hack. Less than an hour later, they have almost all been deleted.
On Drake’s channel followed by 26 million Internet users, the video was called “Justin bieber – Free Paco Sanz (ft. Will Smith, Chris Rock, Skinny flex & Los Pelaos)”. On Lil Nas X’s, it was titled: “Lilnah – HACKED BY @LOSPELAOSBRO ON TWITTER”. Ditto on that of Kanye West, Travis Scott, Juice World or Cardi B. But everywhere, the content is the same.
A man appears, hat on backwards and guitar in hand, before launching into an anything but harmonious interpretation of a song in Spanish. The video lasts a little over a minute, and ends with noises of orgasm. This screenshot, taken by the Spanish media El Diario before the videos were unpublished, shows the extent of the channels concerned:
The videos all claimed to be the work of a Twitter account, @lospelasobro, and carried the hashtag #FreePacoSanz. “We will not stop until the political prisoner Paco Sanz is released”, write the claimed hackers on the social network.
Who is Paco Sanz?
The main protagonist of the video, the man with the guitar, is indeed far from being anonymous in Spain. Nicknamed “the man with 2000 tumors”, Paco Sanz became famous for having scammed nearly 300,000 euros from personalities and anonymous people to finance an alleged treatment for the disease.
“Paco Sanz claimed that he had only a few months left to live when his genetic disease, a real and diagnosed Cowden’s syndrome diagnosed in 2009, led to the appearance of ‘almost 2,000 tumors’. In reality, the reported tumors were benign and did not pose an immediate risk to his life, ”Le Parisien reported in an article on the case.
In February 2021, Paco Sanz was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud, while his partner and accomplice was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison.
The massive hack of these YouTube channels of some of the most followed stars in the world is not a first attempt for the self-proclaimed “Free Paco Sanz” movement, recalls the Spanish site El Diario. In the spring of 2021, the Twitter accounts of several media from the Atresmedia group had also been hacked.
(Picture: Screenshot El Diario)
