A famous Nigerian social media influencer who showed off his luxurious life on Instagram, including a collection of luxury cars, private jets, and designer clothes and jewelry, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was charged with fraudulently obtaining millions of dollars from companies and individuals in the US and overseas.
Ramon Abbas, 40, popularly known on Instagram as Ray Hushpuppi, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to engage in money laundering during his trial in April 2021.
In addition to his 11-year prison sentence, the man known as Hushpuppi was also ordered by Judge Otis D. Wright to pay restitution to two of his fraud victims, amounting to $1.7 million.
The 40-year-old made headlines worldwide during his arrest in Dubai in June 2020, and his once extremely active Instagram account has since gone quiet even though it gained more than 500,000 followers after his arrest.
In September, Hushpuppi wrote a letter to the judge apologizing for his actions. He wrote that his time in jail had helped him reflect on his actions which he regretted.
Before his downfall, Hushpuppi had over two million followers on Instagram and called himself a real estate mogul. However, federal investigators quickly discovered that he financed his flamboyant lifestyle using money from online hacking scams, and he had already gotten more than $24 million.
According to court documents, he targeted many high-profile businesses, including a British football club, a foreign bank, and a law firm in the US.
Martin Estrada, a US attorney, said that email compromise schemes and money laundering had become a huge crime problem internationally and that the US would continue to work with international partners to identify the scammers and bring them to justice.
Hushpuppi’s cyber scams involved massive amounts of money. In one instance, he and a co-conspirator scammed a New York law firm through a business email compromise scheme to wire the conspirators close to a million dollars originally meant for real estate refinancing for one of their clients.
Hushpuppi also pleaded guilty to an attempt to defraud a business person from Qatar of $1 million meant to fund a children’s school in Qatar. Court documents show that he pretended to be a bank official and created a bogus website to convince the businessman to make the wire transfer.
In his letter to the judge, he said he took full responsibility for his actions.
In 2020, one of his co-conspirators confessed to conspiracy to engage in money laundering and was also given an 11-year sentence. He was ordered to pay restitution amounting to over $30 million.
The FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office Assistant Director, Don Alway, described Hushpuppi as one of the most prolific scammers and money launderers the world has ever known.
He said that Hushpuppi used social media to gain popularity and brag about the wealth he had acquired, using his fraudulent schemes that left many people in financial ruin.
Federal officials said they used his social media accounts, which had numerous photos of him posing next to expensive cars, including Bentleys, Ferraris, and Rolls Royces, to get details confirming his identity.
When he was arrested in 2020 at the Palazzo resort in Dubai, investigators seized almost $41 million in cash, $6.8 million worth of cars, a phone, and a laptop.
