Hushpuppi: A Famous Instagram Influencer Has been Sentenced for Fraud
An infamous Instagram influencer from Nigeria, well known as Hushpuppi, has been sentenced to 11 years and three months imprisonment for fraud by the United States District Court in Central District of California. Abbas is considered by the FBI to be one of the world’s most high-profile fraudsters.
Facts about Hushpuppi
With an instagram profile of Hushpuppi, he flaunted his lavish lifestyle. His profile even reached 2.8 million followers until it was finally disabled by Meta, the parent body of the social media platform where he (Hushpuppi) is known to spend most of his time showing off his affluence. He was also well-known as ‘Billionaire Gucci Master’ in Dubai.
His birth name is Ramon Abbas. He was born in Oworonshoki, a poor coastal area in northeast of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital city. In the past, he often helped his mom in Olojojo market. His dad is a taxi driver. One of the resident there, Seye, stated that he liked to treat his friends a lot. “He’s a generous person. He’s the one who will buy beer for everyone here,” Seye added.
Hushpuppi’s Fraud
Abbas was one of ‘Yahoo Boys‘. Yahoo Boys is what romance scammers are called in Nigeria. They will steal other people’s identities, then they commit a romance scam. Once a relationship with the victim is established, these online scammers will start requesting remittances from their online lovers.
Started with Yahoo Boys, Abbas then broadened his criminal horizons. He attempted to launder $13 million (£11 million; $15 million) that was taken from the Maltese Bank of Valletta by a group of North Korean hackers in February 2019. In the same year, October 2019, Hushpuppi also deceptively convinced a New York-based law firm to transfer $922,857 to an account that a co-conspirator owned under a different person’s identity.
Abbas’s greatest final big scam before his arrest in Dubai in June 2020 was straight-up identity theft. To lure his victim, he pretended to be a New York banker for a Qatari businessman that was looking for a $15 million loan to construct a new school in the Gulf state. The US justice department claimed Abbas also acknowledged to “a number of other cyber and commercial email compromise operations that collectively cost more than $24 million in losses.”
Hushpuppi’s Final Sentence
Before his arrest in Dubai, he has been defrauding over 1.9 million people, the majority of them being Americans. He was finally sentenced for 11 years and three months imprisonment by the United States District Court sitting Central District of California for money laundering conspiracy through several online scams. The judge also ordered him to pay fine as much as $1,732,841 (£1,516,182) in restitution to two fraud victims.
He pleaded guilty in April 2021 to one count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering. It was 10 months after he was arrested in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), in June 2020. In a handwritten letter sent to Judge Otis D. Wright, Abbas expressed regret for his misdeeds. He then promised to compensate his victims with his own money. He further claimed that the crime for which he was being prosecuted had only netted him $300,000.
This significant sentence is the result of years of cooperation between law enforcement agencies from several nations, and it should serve as a clear warning to international fraudsters that the FBI will pursue justice for victims whether the criminal activity takes place inside or outside of American borders. For this case, The FBI thanked the government of the United Arab Emirates and the Dubai Police Department for their substantial assistance.
