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Hushpuppi in US court, attempted stealing £100m from English Premier club
BY NICHOLAS ABE
Ramon Olorunwa (Igbalode) Abbas, 37, a.k.a. “Ray Hushpuppi”, who was extradited to the United States recently by the Dubai Police, has been arraigned before a court in Chicago, on Friday.
Hushpuppi, a Nigerian resident in Dubai, was arrested in June by the Dubai Police and thereafter extradited to the US to face a charge of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, filed against him on June 25, by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles.
He is expected to be transferred to Los Angeles in the coming weeks, according to a press release issued by the Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office, California.
Among the charges against him was an attempt to steal £100 million (approximately $124 million) from an unnamed English Premier League soccer club.
According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, Abbas maintains social media accounts that frequently showed him in designer clothes, wearing expensive watches, and posing in or with luxury cars and charter jets.
He is said to be one of the leaders of a transnational network that facilitates computer intrusions, fraudulent schemes, including Business Email Compromise (BEC) schemes, and money laundering, targeting victims around the world.
The affidavit describes BEC schemes as often involving a computer hacker gaining unauthorized access to a business’ email account, blocking or redirecting communications to and/or from that email account, and then using the compromised email account or a separate fraudulent email account to communicate with personnel from a victim company and to attempt to trick them into making an unauthorized wire transfer.
READ: Hushpuppi: How he stole $435.6 million, captured by Dubai police
According to the affidavit, Hushpuppi and others committed a BEC scheme that defrauded a client of a New York-based law firm out of approximately $922,857 in October 2019. He and co-conspirators allegedly tricked one of the law firm’s paralegals into wiring money intended for the client’s real estate refinancing to a bank account that was controlled by him and the co-conspirators.
The affidavit also alleges that Hushpuppi conspired to launder funds stolen in a $14.7 million cyber-heist from a foreign financial institution in February 2019, in which the stolen money was sent to bank accounts around the world. Abbas allegedly provided a co-conspirator with two bank accounts in Europe that he anticipated each would receive €5 million (about $5.6 million) of the fraudulently obtained funds.
Furthermore, Hushpuppi and his gang were alleged to have conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from other fraudulent schemes and computer intrusions, including one scheme to steal £100 million (approximately $124 million) from an English Premier League soccer club.
If convicted of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, Abbas would face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.