In March of 2022, a scandalous document went viral on social media. It alleged that the
famous Nigerian influencer, Hushpuppi who s currently behind bars in the U.S
managed to scam people online for $400,000. In reality, the document which looked like it
came from the FBI was a forgery. Still, people believed it anyway. The United
States government even issued a statement clarifying that the document was a fake,
and that Hushpuppi wasn t scamming people from jail. That s how powerful his reputation is.
Before we dive into how Hushpuppi wound up in jail a story you may know very well
let s talk about how he basically had the Nigerian police department
in his back pocket. In February, 2021, the FBI filed documents implicating Nigerian police Chief
Abba Kyari in a $20,000 bribe scheme, or the equivalent of 8 million Nigerian Naira.
The bribe stemmed from a scam-gone-south in which Hushpuppi tried to rip off one of his associates
by not paying him what he was owed. The associate, Kelly Vincent, set up a meeting in Qatar
between Hushpuppi, some other accomplices, and a gullible Qatari businessman.
Hushpuppi arrived in Qatar and planned on scamming the wealthy businessman.
If the scammed worked out, Vincent expected a healthy commision. However, that meant everyone
had to play their roles perfectly. Hushpuppi played a Wells Fargo banker
from New York named Malik. His two accomplices played the finance guys.
They helped assure the Qatari businessman that the investment was a guaranteed profit even
though they were investing in a school. Hushpuppi said the school needed a little
over $1.1 million. Once the businessman heard enough from other finance guys aka Hushpuppi
s accomplices he said yes to the offer. The businessman gave Hushpuppi the $1.1 million,
who proceeded to launder the money by handing it off to several other associates. However,
greed got the better of him. He sent Vincent some money, but not everything they agreed on.
Upset, Vincent called the Qatari businessman and sang like a bird, telling him all about
the scam. Hushpuppi was understandably upset and ordered the Nigerian police on his payroll
to capture Vincent and keep him behind bars. He wired money into Abba s account,
and the Chief took care of the rest. Vincent spent a month in prison even though
nobody ever filed any charges. Instead, Hushpuppi kept paying the cops to keep the door locked.
Hushpuppi s real name is Ramon Abbas. Despite being in jail for several major criminal charges,
he still has a massive online following. His many followers are treated to 100s of
selfies of Hushpuppi standing in the most lavish and expensive looking locations,
with exotic sports cars, private jets, and fine art perfectly placed in the background.
Through his Instagram, Hushpuppi created a persona that embodied the flex
culture. Every single one of Hushpuppi s posts, usually shot by an offscreen photographer,
shows off his wealth in one way or another. Flex culture hasn t been around for forever,
and it ll forever be around. Plenty of people can t help but want people to see that they can
afford expensive clothes and toys by posting them online and being seen out in public.
Hushpuppi went from being a shining example to a dedicated disciple of all things flex,
a transition that ultimately led to his downfall. But how did Hushpuppi actually get famous?
Where did he come from? In contrast to the wealth
displayed on his Instagram, Hushpuppi grew up as a poor kid in Lagos, Nigeria,
where he was born in 1982. We don t know much about Hushpuppi s childhood, except for the
few times he s mentioned it on instagram, along with a few unreliable sources from Lagos.
Hushpuppi usually describes his childhood as poverty stricken,
as do the neighbors who watched him grow up. His father drove a taxi, while his mother
sold bread on the side of the busy roads. Meanwhile, Hushpuppi, then called Ramon,
earned money by selling second hand clothes and bread, like his mom. He also made some cash by
washing parked cars on the street. According to the few records available,
Hushpuppi didn t obtain fame and fortune until his big move to Malaysia. According to him,
he moved there to achieve a better life. And sure enough, after moving to Malaysia,
Hushpuppi got rich out of nowhere. And he wasn t afraid to show off his newfound
money but you already knew that. Before long, Hushpuppi had gained a
following. He was famous for being rich, leading many of his followers to ask how.
The media wanted to know too. Unlike titans like Zuckerberg and Elon, Hushpuppi didn t
have a corporate entity associated with his name. So, a few media organizations
started asking Hushpuppi for interviews. However, when journalists asked him how he earned
his money, the flex culture enthusiast always gave them the same vague answer: real estate
development. However, there aren t any major real estate projects attached to Hushpuppi s name, nor
any companies. The lack of records only helped to fuel Hushpuppi s Gucci-draped mythos.
Hushpuppi s posts received praise from his adoring followers, who often left
comments saying Hush, as they sometimes called him was their inspiration. They
believed Hushpuppi built his luxurious lifestyle through smarts, and, most importantly, hustle.
The only people who didn t believe Hushpuppi s real-estate-mogul-turned-influencer persona were
American federal investigators. They, along with international investigators and journalists,
questioned the source of Hushpuppi s wealth, and got some crazy answers in the process.
A journalist from the Cable, a Nigerian media organization, visited the area where Hushpuppi
or Ramon as they knew him grew up in Lagos. They interviewed a few of Hushpuppi s old
neighbors, who painted a different version of Hushpuppi than his
millions of fans were familiar with. One neighbor, known to locals as Mama Dele,
says Hushpuppi came by her home on occasion to beg for food.
Mama Dele told the reporters that she only gives away food on credit, as she s strapped for cash
just like everyone else in the neighborhood. She says Ramon ate her food several times without
paying her back. He d show up, hungry and pitiful looking, ask for more food,
and leave with promises to pay her back. He kept that habit until one day, Mama Dele says,
Ramon stopped coming by. She didn t know it at the time, but he wasn t just
avoiding his debts, he was working on a scam. The other neighbor the Cable interviewed chose to
stay anonymous, but provided some interesting details on where Hushpuppi disappeared to.
The anonymous neighbor says Ramon had access to a computer, where he was becoming a yahoo boy.
The term is based on the email server Yahoo. People like Hushpuppi would send emails to the
millions and millions of Yahoo email accounts back when people still used them to trick
their victims into giving them money. The Cable says they ve investigated several
Yahoo cases in Nigeria. They usually involve someone claiming to be an American soldier
stranded in Africa asking a fellow American for money to help them get back home.
When Ramon first tried Yahoo scams he was unsuccessful. The anonymous neighbor says he
was only making a few bucks here and there. But young Ramon s fortunes changed when he traveled
to South Africa and learned more effective Yahoo methods from pro scammers who lived there.
The neighbor says Ramon returned to Lagos with the tools for success,
and started making some serious money. Mama Dele recalls seeing young Ramon turn up one day,
cash in hand. He walked up to her house and paid off all his debts. Then, she said, Ramon paid her
to cook up a batch of pepper catfish soup. As time went on, young Ramon s spending only
got more lavish. Another neighbor said that even after Hushpuppi moved out of the area,
he d still send money back to his friends for food. He told them to buy rice, beans, oil,
and deliver them all to his mom. Speaking of his mom, he also bought her a car!
Ramon s mother, according to the other residents, knew her son dealt in some kind
of illegal business. However, she didn t know what kind. When Ramon asked his brother Yusuf
to join and become his business partner, their mom put her foot down. She wanted at
least one son to have a legitimate career. Ramon still visited his old neighborhood from
time to time, despite people like his mother not liking him all that much. By this point,
most knew Ramon as Hushpuppi, and his wealth was famous online. The locals in Lagos considered
Hushpuppi a billionaire, and expected him to give money back to the community that raised him.
Mama Dele remembers when Hushpuppi visited her for the last time
in 2018. He pulled up in a nice car and they greeted each other enthusiastically. Then,
he gave her 5,000 Naira, the equivalent of $12. Others in the neighborhood criticized Hushpuppi
for only giving Mama Dele $12, but she told journalists she was happy to get it at all.
It was probably because Hushpuppi gave almost nothing to the rest of his old neighborhood.
A hotel owner asked Hushpuppi to buy his business, hoping the so-called billionaire
could fix it up and turn the place into a high end establishment. Hushpuppi refused.
Hushpuppi s goals didn t include Lagos. They were much bigger than that. He wanted
to be important and spend time with important people. He wanted to leave his origins behind,
not revisit them by pumping money into it. And like Hushpuppi s childhood neighborhood,
the Yahoo scams got too small for him. While traveling abroad, mainly in Malaysia,
Hushpuppi participated in a few smaller scams until he reached his mid 20s.
That s when Hushpuppi pulled off his two biggest and boldest scams of his illicit career.
Unlike other fraudsters, Hushpuppi actually owned most of the expensive stuff he flexed
online. Dealerships and jet companies have verified to inquiring journalists that
Hushpuppi did in fact rent private planes, own Ferraris, Lambos, Rolls Royce s, and
the designer clothes he always had on. The flashy appearance inevitably attracted
other new-money individuals concerned with appearances. Most of them were European
soccer players. Hushpuppi was good friends with English striker Tammy Abraham, in particular.
On Hushpuppi s 37th birthday, one of his last birthdays as a free man, Abraham told his big bro
happy birthday in an instagram post. Over time, Hushpuppi got to know other players,
and became well acquainted with Premier League social circles. Eventually, Hushpuppi,
and one of his business partners, Ghaleb Alaumary, saw the Premier League as their next victim.
His lawyer claims Hushpuppi earned his massive income from real estate development
and being an influencer. In reality, Hushpuppi s fortune was built on BECs.
In case you re unfamiliar, a BEC stands for business email compromise. More specifically,
it s when a hacker gets hold of a company s email address and tricks
their customers into paying them money. For example, when Hushpuppi and Ghaleb
tried scamming the Premier League, they first had to gain access to the organization s emails.
Hushpuppi and his associates were supposedly working with hackers who had connections to
state-sponsored hackers in North Korea. Once the hackers logged into the league s
accounts, they could send emails to their contractors or people they did business with.
Then, they sent emails with new bank information and instructed the companies to pay their bills to
this bank instead of the old one. The companies, blissfully unaware,
obliged and sent whatever money they owed to the new account.
Then, Ghaleb cleaned the money from the bank account by laundering it through
other accounts and businesses. Hushpuppi and Ghaleb s scam seemed smart.
However, this particular scam was doomed from the beginning. They planned to steal
$124 million from the Premier League, an amount the sports organization was bound to notice.
But, up to that point, Hushpuppi had been undefeated in BEC scams. Experts believe the
Nigerian influencer was getting cocky cocky enough to try and pull off an impossible heist.
They believed this hypothesis because of the Premier League fiasco and another
brazen theft he d attempt in Malta. In February of 2019, the Bank of Valletta
was cyber attacked by the equivalent of a digital missile assault.
The hackers savagely ripped and tore through the bank's systems, making off
with around $14 million. Coincidentally, that s the same amount the FBI claims
Hushpuppi tried to launder on the same date. Though the bank isn t named exclusively in the
document, it would be a bizarre coincidence if the foreign financial institution described
in the document isn t the same one in Malta. Whether it s a coincidence or not, Hushpuppi moved
the stolen money to four different accounts spread across the world, and the FBI knew all about it.
Thankfully, the bank traced the money and got it back into their customer s accounts.
The FBI followed the money movements back to Hushpuppi by linking together texts he sent to
Ghaleb. In the exchange, Hushpuppi asked Ghaleb if the money had come in yet. Ghaleb said yes,
it was in Canada. Then, Hushpuppi asked for a screenshot, and Ghaleb said he d send one
after his flight. He never got the chance. FBI agents were there waiting for Ghaleb at the
airport. Meanwhile, Hushpuppi was in Qatar, busy scamming the wealthy businessman.
Hushpuppi and a few friends moved out to Dubai. One of those friends
was an old pal from Lagos named Pac. Though Hushpuppi failed to give money to
his Lagos community, he did, in fact, bring some of the community into his money.
Hushpuppi tried to enjoy Dubai with his old friends, especially Pac. But during
his vacation Hushpuppi got two pieces of bad news: Ghaleb and another associate
named Mompha had been arrested at airports. Nevertheless, Hushpuppi was business as usual,
posting pics in front of sports cars, and snapping on boats with Dubai s skyline dominating the
background. The fun ended on June 8th, 2020, at about 1 in the morning. Pac was watching TV when
a team of Dubai SWAT agents erupted through the door and ordered him to lay on the ground.
They went upstairs to Hushpuppi s bedroom and found him in his bed, dazed and confused, probably
wondering why a bunch of armed soldiers were in his suite. They arrested every individual staying
with Hushpuppi, then asked them where the money was. Eventually they found Hushpuppi s stash.
It included 21 laptops, 47 phones, $7 million worth of exotic cars, and $40 million in cash.
No criminal wants to be extradited to the United States. But after Dubai police found the
evidence in his suite, U.S officials had more than enough to extradite him to an American jail.
As of April, 2022, Hushpuppi is awaiting trial and conviction for a laundry list of fraud.
In other words, his passionate fans may not see him for a while. As for Chief Abba,
he pled guilty to multi-million dollar fraud charges in August, 2021,
and faced up to 20 years in jail. Then, things got even worse. Abba was caught working with a
drug smuggling ring after the Hushpuppi saga. Now, the ex-Chief faces even more jail time.
Click to watch one of these next videos! Let us know in the comment section what you
would rather do if you were a scammer in Hushpuppi s shoes, go on the run, or turn yourself in?