Ramon ‘Hushpuppi’ Abbas has pleaded guilty in the U.S. to money laundering and other business email schemes that cost his victims nearly $24 million according to the U.S. Justice Department.
The 37 year old Nigerian plea could land Abbas with a prison sentence of up to 20 years, per court documents. Abbas will also need to “pay full restitution to the victims”.
Hushpuppi and his accomplices 37, pleaded guilty on April 20, according to documents unsealed on Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said in a statement.
They were thus charged with attempt to steal more than $1.1 million from a businessperson attempting to finance the construction of a school for children in Qatar–and the subsequent laundering of illicit proceeds through bank accounts around the world.
Background:
Ramon Abbas is a Nigerian influencer with over 2.5 million followers on Instagram. Known to his fans as hushpuppi, Abbas has built a global following from posting pictures of his lavish spending on cars, watches, designer clothes and private jets.
He is facing criminal charges in the United States of conspiracy to launder money obtained from business email compromise frauds and other scams, including schemes that defrauded a U.S. law firm of about $40M, illegally transferred $14.7M from a foreign financial institution and targeted to steal $124M from an English football club until his arrest by the Dubai Police in June 2020 and his extradition to the United States.
Abbas was detained by authorities in Dubai in June 2020. Documents released on Wednesday show that between January 18, 2019 and June 9, 2020, Abbas and his conspirators targeted multiple victims and laundered funds fraudulently obtained funds through bank cyber-heists (authorizing and causing fraudulent wire transfers through SWIFT), and attempted to trick a victim into making an unauthorized wire transfer via email.
Abbas has pleaded guilty to inflicting loss amounts of $14.7 million on a bank in Malta, and $7.7 million losses for the so-called “victim companies” in a separate case linked to an unnamed Premier League Club. Two other loss amounts–one to an unnamed law firm, and the other to a Qatari businessman–total under $1 million each.
Although these sums are not representative of Abbas’ career earnings, it is very likely that the self-appointed “Billionaire Gucci Master” was never in fact a billionaire.
