A United States court in Los Angeles, California, on 7 November, 2022, sentenced international fraudster, Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, Hushpuppi, to 11 years and three months in a federal prison.
He was also ordered by the federal judge to pay $1.7m in restitution to two of his victims.
Born on 11 October, 1982 in Lagos, Nigeria, the 40-year-old son of a Lagos taxi driver, shared pictures and videos of his extravagant lifestyle in Dubai with his two million Instagram followers – showing off luxury cars, designer clothes, chartered private jets – before his account was deactivated.
Hushpuppi bought a $230,000 Swiss watch and has a dual citizenship and passport from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis.
Police seized $40 million in cash, 13 luxury cars worth $7million, 21 laptops, 47 smartphones, 15 memory storage devices, five external hard drives and 800,000 email accounts belonging to different people and organisations during his arrest.
He was extradited to the United States after his arrest in Dubai in June, 2020.
With a Canadian accomplice, he specialised in Business Email Compromise, BEC, in which he hacks into email accounts, impersonating his victims, and tricks you into wiring money into his own account.
He was also involved in online bank heists and other cyber-enabled fraud.
He, in 2019, helped launder $14.7m from North Korean hackers from a bank in Malta through banks in Romania and Bulgaria.
The Prime Minister of Malta then, Joseph Muscat, had to address a stunned parliament on the issue in February, 2019.
He was also to help launder millions of pounds illegally gotten from a British company and a British football club.
He pleaded guilty in April, 2021 to one count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering.
He agreed in a plea bargain, that he co-conspired to dupe a New York law firm of $923,000 which was paid into the Mexican account of his Canadian accomplice.
He however, insists he did not personally, gain any money in that transaction.
He agreed to have defrauded a man in Qatar who wanted $15m credit to build a school.
The court ordered him to pay $922,857 in damages to the law firm and $809,983 to the Qatari man.
His Canadian accomplice, Ghaleb Alaumary, 37, of Mississauga in Ontario, was charged separately.
He also pleaded guilty in 2020 to one count of money laundering and was sentenced to nearly 12 years imprisonment in addition to paying $30 million in damages.
Ramon Abbas had more than two million Instagram followers before he was arrested in 2020 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
DCP Abba Kyari was linked by the FBI to Hushpuppi, which led to Kyari’s suspension by the Nigerian Police Service Commission in July 2021 and his subsequent detention and trial.
The FBI even released a recorded telephone conversation alleged to be between the two men on a $1.1 million scam.
Hushpuppi’s sentencing is the result of years of collaboration among law enforcement agents in various countries and the FBI.
In a final letter of appeal to the Judge, Justice Otis Wright, on 19 September, 2022 Hushpuppi regretted his crimes in his active years from 2011 to 2020 and sought forgiveness from his family for bringing them a bad name.
photo credit: bbc
