A Nigerian social media influencer who called himself Ray Hushpuppi and flaunted a lavish lifestyle backed by laundering millions of dollars was sentenced Monday in Los Angeles to more than 11 years in federal prison. Ramon Abbas, 40, was also ordered by a federal judge to pay $1.7 million in restitution to two fraud victims, according to a statement from the United States Department of Justice. Abbas was “one of the most prolific money launderers in the world,” Don Alway, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said in the statement. Prosecutors said Abbas and a Canadian laundered money from a variety of online crimes, including bank cyberheists and business email, or BEC, a prolific crime in which fraudsters break into email accounts, pretend to be someone they’re not and they fool the victims to cover up money where it doesn’t belong. In 2019, he helped launder about $14.7 million stolen by North Korean hackers from a bank in Malta, funneling the money through banks in Romania and Bulgaria, prosecutors said. He also helped launder millions of pounds stolen from a British company and a professional soccer club in the United Kingdom, had a New York-based law firm transfer nearly $923,000 to a criminal account and admitted in a plea deal that he helped defraud of someone in Qatar who requested a $15 million loan to build a school, federal prosecutors said. In July 2021, a top Nigerian police officer, Abba Kyari, was suspended by the country’s police service commission following an FBI indictment linking him to Abbas. At Monday’s sentencing, Abbas was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $922,857 in restitution to the law firm and $809,983 in restitution to the victim in Qatar. “By his own admission, over the course of just 18 months the defendant conspired to launder more than $300 million,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum, although they said much of the intended loss “ultimately did not materialize.” Abbas, who goes by the name “Ray Hushpuppi”, had more than two million followers on Instagram before he was arrested in 2020 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. His social media posts showed him living a life of luxury, with private jets, extremely expensive cars and high-end clothes and watches. “I hope to someday inspire more young people to join me on this path,” read an Instagram post by Abbas, who pleaded guilty in April 2021 to one count of money laundering conspiracy. Ghaleb Alaumary, 37, of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, was charged separately. He pleaded guilty in 2020 to one count of money laundering conspiracy, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to nearly 12 years in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $30 million in restitution.
