By David Adebayo
United States Central District Court in California has sentenced Nigerian socialite and internet sensation, Ramon Abbas, a.k.a Hushpuppi to 11 years in jail for fraud and money laundering.
Though it was gathered that Hushpuppi will spend only nine years in prison as he had already spent two years in an American prison.
Per Seconds News recalls that Hushpuppi was arrested in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in June 2020 with 12 accomplices over allegations bordering on hacking, impersonation, scamming, banking fraud, and identity theft, robbing some of his victims of their money in the U.S, Qatar, the United Kingdom, and other places and was thereafter extradited to the US for prosecution.
The court had shifted the sentencing of alleged Nigerian cyber fraudster, Hushpuppi, for the fourth time.
His extradition to the U.S. was hinged after the UAE police detailed his arrest where he was accused of defrauding 1.9 million victims to the tune of N168 billion.
In July 2021, he agreed to plead guilty to the multi-million-dollar fraud charges slammed against him by the American government.
He had entered into a plea bargain agreement with the U.S. government in July 2021 in the expectation of getting a lighter punishment.
However, the trial judge, Otis Wright, then fixed November 7, 2022, as the new date to rule on Hushpuppi’s case.
The socialite however bagged only 11 years in prison after he appealed to US Judge Otis Wright to temper justice with mercy and a lighter jail term after scoring high in cleaning activities while in prison.
Hushpuppi’s Instagram page, which has 2.8 million followers, has vanished from the image-sharing platform.
It is, however, unclear whether it was officially removed from Instagram or if the page was temporarily disabled by someone with access to it.
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