Nigerian Instagram celebrity Hushpuppi aka Ramon Abbas, knows what he won’t be doing for the next 11 years- draping himself in Gucci. “Billionaire Gucci Master” has been jailed for over 11 years for his involvement in an international fraud syndicate. The 40-year-old conspired to launder over $300 million, proving he would do anything to live a hedonistic lifestyle and not give up on his fraudulent ways. The money laundering took place over an 18-month period in which Abbas did it all by hacking into email accounts and persuading victims to wire money. The transgressions made Hushpuppi $300,000 and landed him a jail sentence lasting more than a decade. The man boasted 2.4 million followers on Instagram, living an enviable life of luxury, albeit one laced with crime.
Nothing lasts forever, and that includes Abbas’s glory days. He was sentenced, along with a Canadian man, to 135 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to money laundering. A Los Angeles judge ordered Abbas to pay over $1.7 million in restitution to two victims, per Fortune. “Abbas leveraged his social media platforms…to gain notoriety and to brag about the immense wealth he acquired,” said Don Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, in a court document. “This significant sentence is the result of years’ worth of collaboration among law enforcement in multiple countries and should send a clear warning to international fraudsters that the FBI will seek justice for victims, regardless of whether criminals operate within or outside United States borders,” Alway stated.
His crimes go back years. In June 2020, the FBI stormed the apartment of 38-year-old Raymond Abbas on claims of a $432 million cyberscam. They walked out with a whopping $37 million in cash and luxury cars from the apartment of the wealthy Instagram celebrity in Dubai when he was sleeping.
The conman had a team of 12 working with him. He was eventually charged with “obtaining money from others through fraudulent means after authorities found email addresses of two million victims on several phones and computers seized during the operation.
In 2021, the former secondhand clothes trader from Lagos pleaded guilty in a California court to money laundering and other business email schemes that cost his victims nearly $24 million.
