 [Aljazeera] A Nigerian social media influencer who called himself Ray Hushpuppi and flaunted a lavish lifestyle supported 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 $1.7m 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.
Don sez Abbas has 'been on their radar' since 1983.
Prosecutors said Abbas and a Canadian man laundered money from various online crimes including bank cyberheists and business email compromise, or BEC, a prolific crime in which crooks hack into email accounts, pretend to be someone they’re not, and fool victims into wiring money where it doesn’t belong.
In 2019, he helped launder some $14.7m stolen by North Korean hackers from a bank in Malta, funnelling the money through banks in Romania and Bulgaria, prosecutors said.
Got to love a Wraith ride.
He also helped launder millions of pounds stolen from a British company and a professional football club in the United Kingdom, got a New York-based law firm to transfer nearly $923,000 to a criminal account, and acknowledged in a plea agreement that he helped defraud someone in Qatar who sought a $15m loan to build a school, federal prosecutors said.
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