Hushpuppi
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas (born 11 October 1982), commonly known as Hushpuppi, Hush, or Ray Hushpuppi is a Nigerian former Instagram influencer and convicted felon. He was sentenced in the United States to 11 years for conspiracy to launder money obtained from business email compromise frauds and other scams, including schemes that defrauded a US law firm out of approximately $40 million, illegally transferred $14.7 million from a foreign financial institution, and targeted to steal $124 million from an English Premier League club.
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas | |
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Born | Ramon Olorunwa Abbas 11 October 1982 Lagos State, Nigeria |
Nationality | Nigerian |
Other names | Hushpuppi, Hush, Ray Hushpuppi, The Billionaire Gucci Master |
Occupation | Instagram influencer |
Years active | 2011–2020 |
Known for | Alleged business email compromise, scam, and money laundering |
Criminal charges | Conspiracy to launder money |
Criminal penalty | 11 years |
Until his arrest by the Dubai Police in June 2020 and subsequent extradition to the United States, Abbas posted pictures and videos of his lavish spending on exotic cars, watches, designer clothes, bags from expensive brands like Gucci, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton and of himself boarding helicopters, with celebrities, footballers, and Nigerian politicians or while on charter jets. He claimed to be a real estate developer. He also holds a passport from St Kitts and Nevis, which was fraudulently obtained through a sham marriage to a St. Kitts and Nevis citizen.
On the night his apartment at the Palazzo Versace was raided in an operation code-named Fox Hunt 2, Abbas was arrested alongside eleven others in six simultaneous raids. Detectives seized more than 150 million dirham (about $40 million) in cash, 13 luxury cars worth Dh 25 million ($7M), 21 laptops, 47 smartphones, 15 memory storage devices, five external hard drives and 800,000 emails of potential victims alongside suitcases full of cash. The arrest was part of an FBI investigation that indicted him as being a "key player" in a transnational cybercrime network that provided "safe havens for stolen money around the world."