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  • 2019-12-20 (xsd:date)
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  • The tale of a Nigerian who hacked the US government to grant his friends citizenship? It started on a satirical site (en)
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  • A story circulating on Nigerian blogs, YouTube channels and in Facebook posts claims a Nigerian man named Abaeze Atuche hacked the US government and managed to grant permanent American citizenship to 33 of his friends and family members. However, the story originated on a satirical website. While the story names Atuche as one of the suspects caught up in a genuine mass arrest of Nigerians over alleged online crimes in the US, his name does not appear in the indictment released by the FBI. One Facebook post sharing the story, which we’ve archived here , reports that Atuche is a hacker and he had done something that no hacker had ever attempted to do before. It adds that Atuche hacked the US government and gave all members of his family and 15 of his friends’ permanent American citizenship. As we speak the American government is in a process of deporting all 33 people who got their citizenship as a result of Atuche’s hack. The story has made its way into numerous YouTube videos, which have racked up more than 10,000 views between them. We’ve archived some of them here , here , and here . Numerous blogs across Africa and the United States have shared the same story, with a picture of a man being taken away by an officer from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). We‘ve archived some of them here , here , and here . A screenshot taken on December 20, 2019, showing a Facebook post which claims a Nigerian man hacked the US government for citizenship There was a mass arrest of Nigerians, but there’s no ‘Abaeze Atuche’ on the list The posts claim that Atuche was one of over 80 Nigerians who were arrested in the USA for internet fraud and other online crimes. This part of the story appears to be based on a real-life event. In August, the FBI announced a 252-count indictment that accused 80 people in the US and Nigeria -- including 77 Nigerians -- of participating in a massive conspiracy to steal millions of dollars through a variety of fraud schemes. The names and offences of all 77 Nigerians were published by the FBI -- you can read the indictment here . There is no Abaeze Atuche on the list. We ran several reverse image searches of the photo used alongside some versions of the story, supposedly depicting Atuche. We found that it shows one of the 80 people who were really were charged in the FBI probe -- you can see him in this ABC News video , wearing the same floral shirt. A screenshot taken on December 20, 2019, showing one of the 80 -- who is not Atuche All 80 of the suspects were picked up over allegations of involvement of cyber crime and internet fraud amounting to an estimated $46 million. These alleged cyber attacks were against private citizens and companies, and the FBI report makes no link to any bid for US citizenship. We traced the article to find its earliest version. After multiple searches, we found that the article was first published by Ihlaya News , a South African parody website which has been the source of several viral stories fact-checked by AFP. The Afrikaans word ‘Ihlaya’ translates as ‘joke’ in English, while its tagline, ‘nuusparodie waarvan jy hou’, translates to ‘news parody you like’. So, the story was invented, playing on the image some of Nigerians abroad and stereotypes surrounding the country’s notorious online fraudsters. But like several other tales that have migrated from the parody site, it was subsequently reported as genuine news. You can find other fact-checks of stories that originated on the site here and here . (en)
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