The man with a noose around his neck is not Hamza Bendelladj, as fact-checkers have pointed out for years. The hacker is alive and serving his sentence in a US prison for selling malware that caused major financial harm not only to institutions, but to individual people.
MARY ALEXANDER • 20 May 2024
“This is Hamza Bendelladj. Hacked 217 banks and made 4000 million USD. Donated everything to Africa and Palestine. He was executed with a smile.”
This eight-year old zombie claim is again doing the rounds on social media, including in Nigeria and South Africa, in April and May 2024.*
Most versions use a graphic with a photo of a smiling man in handcuffs being escorted by two other men. Another photo shows a similar-looking man, also smiling, with a noose around his neck.
In South Africa, the graphic was posted on a Facebook page for supporters of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, with the comment: “He was Black conscientised.” The country is set to hold general elections on 29 May.
The claim can also be seen here, here, here, here and here.
But as fact-checkers have been pointing out for years, the financial hacker Hamza Bendelladj is alive, although in a US prison. And the man in the noose is not Bendelladj.
Who is Hamza Bendelladj?
Bendelladj comes from the North African country of Algeria. He became known as the “smiling hacker” and the “happy hacker” because he’s shown with a big grin on his face in photos taken after his arrest in Thailand in 2013 . He was extradited to the US.
In 2016 a US court sentenced Bendelladj, then 27, to 15 years in prison after he was found guilty of wire and bank fraud, computer fraud and abuse, and conspiring to commit these crimes.
He and his accomplice, Russian hacker Aleksandr Panin, developed malicious software known as SpyEye. The virus would infect people’s computers and steal banking logins, credit card details, usernames, passwords and other personal information. They also sold the malware to other hackers.
According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, SpyEye was the “preeminent malware for cyber criminals” from 2009 to 2011, used to infect more than 10 million computers and causing close to US$1 billion “in financial harm to individuals and institutions”.
In 2015, while Bendelladj was on trial, there were rumours that he had donated the money he stole to Palestine. But no proof of this has emerged. There’s also no evidence that he donated it “to Africa”, whatever that means.
Rumours also emerged that the US court would sentence him to death. This prompted the US ambassador to Algeria to take to X (then Twitter) to say: “Computer crimes are not capital crimes & are not punishable by the death penalty.”
Hacker set to be released in July 2024
Bendelladj is now 35 years old and being held in the Terminal Island low-security federal prison in San Pedro, a city in the US state of California. According to the federal prisons inmates locator, he is set to be released on 6 July.
The smiling hacker has not been executed. So who is the man with the rope around his neck?
As Africa Check found when we debunked the claim back in February 2020, the photo shows Majid Kavousifar, who was publicly executed in the Middle Eastern country of Iran in 2007 for the murder of a judge.
The claim that Bendelladj was “executed with a smile” has been online since February 2016, popping up sporadically every year since then. Its resurgence in 2024 may have something to do with Israel’s war on Gaza. But it remains false.
Update: Bendelladj was released from US imprisonment and returned to Algeria in July 2024. He is active on social media.
* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.
Published by Africa Check on 6 June 2024