Again, Hushpuppi to spend 135 months in U.S. jail

Guilt-racked Nigerian born, Ramon Abass a k.a Hushpuppi is to spend another 11 years and three months in an American jail, the United States District Court sitting Central District of California has ruled.

He was tried for money laundering conspiracy through several online scams.

The 37-year-old had pleaded guilty to the charges filed against him.

However, this judgment is the end of Hushpuppi’s trial since his arrest in June 2020 at his Dubai hotel apartment.

Persecondnews reports that Justice Otis Wright II, who handed down the judgment on Monday, said he found Hushpuppi guilty of the allegations including laundering proceeds of a school financing scam, business email compromise and other fraudulent cyber schemes slammed against him.

Hushpuppi’s verified Instagram account was deactivated by Meta, the parent body of the social media platform where he flaunts his wealth.

Hushpuppi’s travails began in June 2020 when he was arrested in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and was extradited to the United States on July 3.

He was busted for defrauding over 1.9 million people, the majority of them being Americans.

Court documents said Abbas’s crimes cost victims almost $24 million. Prosecutors alleged he was responsible for scams worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In one scheme, he tried to steal more than $1.1m from someone who wanted to fund a new children’s school in Qatar.

Kristi Johnson, acting director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said that Abbas was one of the “most high-profile money launderers in the world”, who acted in the open rather than the shadows.

Almost $41m in cash and 13 cars valued at about $6.8m were seized, as were phone and computer evidence containing more than 100,000 fraudulent files.

In addition, the email addresses of nearly two million possible victims were found, according to Dubai Police.