Between this strange video and the pointless one on Madoff, there is one on Blast Club, the investment club of Anthony Bourbon, the star investor of Qui veut être mon associé ?, France's version of Shark Tank. In twenty minutes, the channel accuses Bourbon of having set up a “massive investment fraud”: Feed, his meal-replacement startup, losing €30M, Blast Club with €100M invested for zero exits, 5% commission plus 20% carried interest, resale of his own shares to his members at a €200M valuation, fake comments bought on social media, and M6, the TV network that airs the show, complicit for having lent him credibility without checking the file. It rings a bell. No wonder: Zero Bullshit is cited as a source in the video.
The video ends on Bourbon's departure for Greece, presented as an organised escape to “get the funds out” and avoid prosecution. The parallel with Hakisition is transparent: same club model, same accusations.
BOURBON AND GREECE
The reality is simpler. Bourbon moved his holding company and cites security reasons, pointing to the string of kidnappings that have targeted crypto entrepreneurs in France since 2024. Things got out of hand when Yves Vilaginès, head of the Entrepreneurs desk at Les Echos, France's leading business daily, posted his home address on LinkedIn. Les Echos apologised after one of Bernard Arnault's sons stepped in (LVMH, the Arnault family's group, owns the paper). We told the whole story in detail (in French).
On the substance, most of the accusations are based on Zero Bullshit's investigations, including the Feed figures. The amounts are inflated, the conclusions slanted. What's interesting is less what the video says than who commissioned it.
That Blast has skeletons of its own, we have covered here (in French). But the reality is that the only initial purpose of this YouTube channel was for Benotmane to settle his scores with Bourbon.
Because this YouTube channel was commissioned by Hakim Benotmane.
The story begins in November 2025, between the two Zero Bullshit newsletters on Benotmane, while he is locked in a media feud with Bourbon.
Benotmane going after Blast Club takes some nerve, by the way. According to my information, it was a financier in his circle, a certain Loïc, who followed Bourbon's clubs closely and explained to him that the model made money. Benotmane then asked Naji to dissect how Blast worked in order to replicate it. Hakisition is a copy of what he has had denounced in videos, sometimes aimed at Blast, sometimes arranged to whitewash himself.
On the advice of his circle, he calls on someone hiding behind the Instagram account raptvpeople, which hasn't posted anything to its 36K followers in 4 years. The idea is to create a channel about scammers, which will publish a few videos before doing one on Blast, to be used for advertising. And more broadly to use it to settle scores with the “pains in the ass”, as Benotmane calls them.
Messages from Benotmane to raptvpeople. The screenshots are in French; the key lines are translated in the text.
While the Madoff video, due to be published in December, is being prepared, Benotmane places an order against Laurent Fernandez, a smooth talker whose storytelling runs on cigars and big cars, and who sells tax optimisation.
Conversation between raptvpeople and Hakim Benotmane (in French). Further down the conversation, Benotmane gives his personal phone number. A voice message makes it possible to formally identify his voice.
The video hasn't been published to date, but it was indeed teased on the account linked to the YouTube channel. Several dozen fake accounts comment, almost all along the same lines, on this post with 269 likes, on an account with over 12K followers after only a few weeks. And while none of the other posts had a single comment.
pmproductionoff's Instagram post on Laurent Fernandez. 269 likes, bought comments, and an account at 12K followers within a few weeks.
The Instagram account goes on to tease other investigations, but without videos, notably on Aurélie Bard, the famous Ikea accountant who walked off with a few million. And about whom we still know next to nothing.
Be that as it may, the Madoff video has to be taken down for copyright infringement: the rights holders of the French rapper Maes requested its removal, and the video only comes back online on 2 December. A convenient accident: it makes it possible to wait for things to calm down, so that the video doesn't come out at the height of the media confrontation. But Benotmane's messages leave no doubt about his intentions. Nor raptvpeople's about the strategy.
raptvpeople's strategy: publish decoy videos to stay under the radar.
Benotmane's instructions are unambiguous. “Go on, pile it on. We need something crazy. He tried to destroy me. He has to be destroyed.”
The problem is that Benotmane is disappointed with the result. Initially he wanted a human to front the video, and he isn't really a fan of the all-AI approach.
“That's heavy. Don't you have a real guy who can make a video?”
Hakim Benotmane, message to raptvpeople
raptvpeople's proposal, with the channel's first video as the thumbnail.
Comparison between raptvpeople's proposals to Benotmane (left) and how they were applied in the first video, on Madoff (right).
Worried about the results, raptvpeople reassures him:
“Whatever happens, we'll add views and comments under [the] video ourselves.”
raptvpeople, message to Benotmane
As for the video's content, raptvpeople offers to have it relayed by a post on Forbes, or even to invent false information.
“And in Closer [a French celebrity gossip magazine], we can make up rumours about [his] gay affairs lol behind [his] wife's back.”
raptvpeople, message to Benotmane
So the Blast video comes out on 23 March, shortly after the end of the season of Qui veut être mon associé ?, and has racked up a little over 20K views to date. Hard to say whether the figure is real, because several dozen comments are, as raptvpeople had promised, bought.
On 3 April, the Hakisition video comes out, but it's only on 5 April that the flood of fake comments arrives.
The fake comments under the Hakisition video, all posted on the same day. All the accounts were created recently.
Bought.