Farzad "Tony" Toutouni had over one million Instagram followers, a feed full of luxury aircraft and high-end cars, and a content style that alternated between scantily clad women and hard-core pornography. He called himself the "King of Instagram" under the handle "Lunatic Living." ICE called him an illegal alien with a criminal record stretching back to 1989.
They arrested him on October 27 in Los Angeles. He's not posting from custody.
The NY Post reported the arrest, which ICE announced on November 9. According to ICE's own press release, Toutouni is an Iranian citizen who first entered the United States legally in 1983. By the end of the decade, he'd launched what the agency described as a "crime spree" — charges including drug possession and sale, criminal threats, criminal conspiracy, forgery, kidnapping, robbery, and extortion. He was sentenced to more than 16 months.
An immigration judge ordered him removed in 1993. He wasn't removed. A second immigration judge ordered him removed in 1999, and that time he was actually deported — to Mexico. That should have been the end of the story.
It wasn't. Toutouni told authorities he re-entered the United States illegally on or about April 4, 2011, near Saint Clair, Michigan, by crossing the river on an electric raft he'd purchased in Canada. He then spent the next fifteen years building an Instagram empire, openly posting his location, his lifestyle, and his face to more than a million followers while being in the country illegally the entire time.
He also used the alias "Robert," which is the kind of low-effort identity work that suggests he wasn't exactly losing sleep over getting caught. ICE noted he posted pictures of himself "with high-end cars, luxury aircraft and scantily clad women." The agency's description was diplomatic. His actual feed included content that Instagram's own terms of service technically prohibit.
The criminal history didn't stop at the border crossings. In June 2023, an Israeli immigrant named Emil Lahaziel was murdered outside the West Hollywood mansion Toutouni was renting. The man posting bottle-service videos and supercar photos had a body outside his front door and a rap sheet that included kidnapping and extortion.
The immigration system had two chances to keep Toutouni out of the country. The first removal order in 1993 went unenforced for six years. The deportation in 1999 held for twelve years until he paddled back across a river in Michigan on a raft. From 2011 to 2026 — fifteen years — he lived openly in Los Angeles, built a public social media brand seen by millions, and apparently never triggered a single flag.
ICE Los Angeles finally picked him up on October 27, 2026. He remains in custody pending removal proceedings. The man who spent fifteen years flaunting a lifestyle funded by a criminal record, broadcasting his exact whereabouts to a million strangers, is now waiting to find out which country gets him next.
The "King of Instagram" posted everything except his immigration status. Turns out that was the one detail that mattered.