A Nigerian man accused of conspiring to launder a fortune of email scams, and who showed his wealth to 2.4 million Instagram followers, came to the United States to face charges, prosecutors said Friday.
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, or “Hushpuppi” on Instagram and Snapchat, made an initial appearance in Chicago after arriving with the FBI from the United Arab Emirates, where he had been living, prosecutors said in a statement. He is expected to be transferred to Los Angeles to face pending charges there in the coming weeks, they said.
Abbas allegedly conspired with others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in scams targeting an English Premier League law firm, bank and soccer club, according to a criminal complaint filed last month in federal court.
Messages sent to her Instagram and Snapchat accounts for comment on Friday were not immediately returned. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer to represent him.
Abbas’s Instagram account is awash with samples of wealth, from luxury cars to private jets, as well as videos and photos of him jogging with celebrities, including a Manchester City soccer player, Nigerian singer, and Turkish chef.
“This case is directed at a key player in a major transnational conspiracy who lived an opulent lifestyle in another country while allegedly providing safe havens for stolen money worldwide,” said Nick Hanna, the US attorney in The Angels.
UAE authorities arrested Abbas last month, and FBI agents arrested him this week, prosecutors said.
Authorities said Abbas and the unidentified others in his network specialized in what are known as “commercial email compromise” schemes. That type of scheme usually involves gaining unauthorized access to a corporate email account or tricking a company into sending a bank transfer to scammers.
Business email engagement scams accounted for $ 1.7 billion in alleged losses last year, according to the FBI.
A client of an anonymous New York-based law firm lost about $ 923,000 last year after Abbas and others tricked a paralegal into sending them money intended to finance the client’s real estate, the FBI said. .
Another scheme involved $ 14.7 million stolen from a non-US financial institution last year.
