The
United States Department of Justice has said
Nigerian Instagram celebrity, Ramon Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, faces 20
years’ imprisonment for
suspected money laundering from his various cybercrime
schemes worth $435m (N168bn).
According to a statement by the US DOJ on Friday, Abbas, 37,
arrived in Chicago Thursday evening after being “expelled from Dubai”.
The suspect was said to have made his initial US court
appearance on Friday morning in Chicago and he was expected to be transferred
to Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
Abbas, alongside his accomplices, including Olalekan Ponle (aka
Woodberry), was arrested by officials of the Dubai Police and Interpol on June
10 for a series of crimes like money laundering, fraud, hacking of websites and
accounts, impersonation and banking fraud.
Police said the suspects scammed over 1.9 million people in a
fraudulent scheme worth $435m (N168bn). Thirteen luxury cars, estimated at
N3.7bn; 21 laptops, 47 smartphones, 15 storage devices, and five hard disks
containing data were recovered from the house where they were arrested.
Hushpuppi was subsequently handed over to the US Federal Bureau
of Investigation on Thursday and extradited to the US, where he faces criminal
charges alleging he conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from
business email compromise frauds and other scams, including schemes targeting a
US law firm, a foreign bank and an English Premier League soccer club.
The US DOJ said a criminal complaint was filed on June 25 by
federal prosecutors in Los Angeles after FBI’s investigation showed that Abbas
financed this opulent lifestyle through crime and that he was one of the
leaders of a transnational network that facilitated computer intrusions,
fraudulent schemes and money laundering, targeting victims around the world in
schemes designed to steal hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the DOJ statement, US Attorney Nick Hanna, said in 2019
alone, the FBI recorded $1.7bn in losses by companies and individuals
victimised through BECs, “the type of scheme Mr Abbas is charged with
conducting from abroad.”
In the affidavit filed against Abbas, it was alleged that he
defrauded a client of a New York-based law firm out of approximately $922,857
in October 2019.
The affidavit also alleged that Abbas conspired to launder funds
stolen in a $14.7m cyber heist from a foreign financial institution in
February, 2019, in which the stolen money was sent to bank accounts around the
world.
The statement read in part, “Abbas allegedly provided a
co-conspirator with two bank accounts in Europe that Abbas anticipated each
would receive €5m (about $5.6m) of the fraudulently obtained funds.
“Abbas and others further conspired to launder hundreds of
millions of dollars from other fraudulent schemes and computer intrusions,
including one scheme to steal £100m (approximately $124m) from an English
Premier League soccer club, the complaint alleges.”
The US DOJ stated, “If convicted of conspiracy to engage in
money laundering, Abbas would face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in
federal prison.”
The statement added that Hushpuppi was being prosecuted by
Assistant US Attorneys Anil J. Antony and Joseph B. Woodring of the Cyber and
Intellectual Property Crimes Section.
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