Hushppupi
The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday said an English Premier League club was among the victims Nigerian fraudster, Ramon Abbas popularly known as Ray Hushpuppi, conspired to defraud.
The allegation was contained in an affidavit deposed to by FBI Special Agent, Andre Innocenti, who is assigned to the Los Angeles Field Office High-tech Organise Crime Squad.
According to the affidavit, Hushpuppi will face criminal charges for conspiring to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from business email compromise frauds and other scams including schemes targeting a U.S. law firm, a foreign bank and an unnamed English Premier League club.
It alleges that Hushpuppi and others committed a business email comprise scam that defrauded a client of a New York-based law firm out of approximately $922,857 (N350.6m) in October 2019.
American authorities also alleged that Hushpuppi conspired to launder funds stolen in a $14.7m (N5.5bn) cyber-heist from a foreign financial institution in February 2019, in which the stolen money was sent to bank accounts around the world.
“Abbas and others further conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from other fraudulent schemes and computer intrusions, including one scheme to steal £100m (approximately N47.12bn) from an English Premier League club.
“If convicted of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, Abbas would face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison,” part of the affidavit read.
Hushpuppi joins a list of high-profile Nigerians to be arrested so far in 2020.
He was arrested months after several other Nigerians including Obinwanne Okeke and Ismaila Mompha; who were apprehended in August and October 2019 respectively, for their alleged roles in separate multinational fraud.
Hushpuppi, who has over two million followers on Instagram, is known for his display of luxury on social media.
He was arrested along with Olalekan Jacob Ponle, also known as Woodberry and 10 others.
The 12 suspects were arrested in six simultaneous raids carried out by the e-police unit of the Dubai Police.
The gang was responsible for about N169bn fraud involving over 1.9 million victim
Items worth N15.845bn were also seized from them during the raid.
13 luxury cars worth N2.640bn, 21 laptops, 47 smartphones, 15 memory storage devices, five external hard drives and 800,000 emails of potential victims were also recovered from the gang.
