Blessings on Blessings "Thank you, Lord, for the
many blessings in my life. Continue to shame those waiting for me to be shamed”.Hushpuppi
posted this caption just TWO weeks before Dubai Police raided his luxury home.
Anyone that actually thought Hushpuppi was a scammer and wanted to see him get caught
didn’t have to wait that long after THAT instagram post.
Just how did he make it SO easy for the police to catch him?
BEC Schemes Let’s first get into it. How did Hushpuppi
make his money? It DEFINITELY wasn’t from real estate as he claimed. It seems that ALL his money
was from scamming. Hushpuppi and his team weren’t slouches in this department. They’re probably as
good as it gets when it comes to scamming. Most of the time, they were trying to scam some big
business. This is what the Feds call a BEC scam, which stands for Business Email Compromise scams.
BEC schemes are one of the most difficult cyber crimes to track for law enforcement.
This is because the scammers are typically scattered all around the world. It’s tough to
get jurisdiction to apprehend the entire team of scammers. Just how big of a problem are BEC scams?
In 2019, the FBI recorded $1.7 BILLION dollars in losses by companies and individuals who were
victims of this specific type of scam! Hushpuppi and his team
definitely contributed to that number with the businesses they targeted.
Hushpuppi Method Here’s the basic
overall plan on what they’d do. Hushpuppi and his team would hack into emails at a
large targeted company. To be able to do this already shows sophistication! First
they would just scan for emails that caught their eye. They’re looking for emails that
were between different companies that are sending money to each other for any reason.
Most of the time it was just one company billing the other for services or products.
So Hushpuppi and his team would just sit. And then they’d wait.
And they’d follow the email correspondence between the companies.
They needed to gather contextual details. Why? So when they took over, the scammed company
would feel as if they’re still talking to the same person, and have no suspicion whatsoever!
Once they have all the details, they’re ready to take over. They would simply redirect emails to
their own email account. They’ll act like the company with the product or service.
They would email the paying, currently getting scammed customer and say that they have a new bank
account. So of course, the customer is thinking they’re still talking to the same, trusted person.
They would send money to the new bank account and just like that, the company’s money would be gone!
Hushpuppi’s team was responsible for hacking and tricking the companies into wiring money
into the wrong bank accounts. Hushpuppi himself was responsible for opening the bank accounts.
His specialty was being able to find bank accounts
where large amounts of money could be sent without any alerts or suspicions.
The cash trail would disappear
right after his team of money mules would buy bitcoin with the stolen money.
Nigeria Scam Origin One question you may be asking is, why
are so many scams from Nigeria in the first place? According to Nigerian economist Ebuka Emebinah,
it's because Nigerian culture is one where people believe that just the results speak for you.
According to him, Nigerians don't place as much emphasis on HOW someone made their money. Just
the fact that they HAVE money is good enough. Nigerians first got famous for running scams
right at the time the internet started becoming mainstream in the 90s.
It definitely didn’t take long for Nigerians to become famous for scamming gullible Westerners
out of millions of dollars with the start of the infamous Nigerian Prince scam!
Intentional Filter One interesting fact is that scammers
actually are able to take advantage of everyone knowing that Nigeria is famous for scamming.
Did you know that they actually INTENTIONALLY say they’re from Nigeria in any variations of
the famous Nigerian Prince scheme? But why? The reason is because then they quickly filter
out the people who’re not gullible, because they’re a giant waste of time.
The scammers intentionally target the most gullible people within the population.
This is also the reason why these phishing emails are filled with typos and bad grammar!
Penal Section 419 These scams became widely known as 419s,
because of the section of the Nigerian penal code for these types of crimes. The
first wave of Nigerian 419 scammers were mostly uneducated. But then the next wave were young
and well educated. Young Nigerians were frustrated by the lack of good jobs in
the Nigerian economy and because of widespread corruption in the government. The uneducated
scammers ended up being the rich guys throwing money around partying WITH
government officials! So many young Nigerians simply decided to join them.
Another reason is that a lot of early Nigerian scammers actually established legitimate
businesses and became respected philanthropists or even politicians in senior leadership positions.
Obviously, this leads to many young Nigerians considering scamming a
valid way to start off a career. And many of them just never leave the profession because
they felt that there aren’t other ways to make it rich in Nigeria.
The Real Hushpuppi So who WAS “Ray Hushpuppi”, or Hush anyways? His
real name is Ramon Olorunwa Abbas. He was born in Nigeria, but he lived in Dubai running his scams.
And once he started making boatloads of money, he started documenting his lifestyle on instagram.
Big mistake, because that’s why investigators started getting interested in his personal life!
Federal agents began wondering how on earth someone named Hushpuppi was able to live
such an extravagant lifestyle. This guy called himself
the Billionaire Gucci Master. No wonder the Feds started getting interested!
FBI Special agent Andrew Innocenti started diving into Hushpuppi’s world.
He went through hundreds of images on his Instagram account. He saw all the images
that showed Hushpuppi in designer clothes, exotic cars, and expensive watches. Innocenti
noticed that Hushpuppi wrote he did Real Estate in Dubai for a living.
Caught Once Innocenti
started poking around on his instagram, he got a federal search warrant to access data and
conversations between Hushpuppi and his team on their iPhones. He figured that Hushpuppi wasn’t
in real estate at all. He stole untold millions of dollars from many different big businesses!
For Innocenti, putting everything together wasn’t hard. Hushpuppi’s
Instagram had an email and phone number saved for account security purposes.
Innocenti was able to link the email and phone number from his Instagram account to
transactions and transfers he used through a variety of scams. It was THAT simple!
His Apple and Snapchat records also provided information that helped Innocenti confirm his
REAL identity and his address in Dubai. Everything he posted on Instagram was a helpful clue. For
example, his birthday celebration posts on Instagram helped to confirm his actual
birthdate that Innocenti found on his official records. The date that he posted his birthday
cake was the key here. This was how Innocenti knew Hushpuppi was really Ramon Olorunwa Abbas!
The Raid UAE investigators eventually raided his
apartment at the Palazzo Versace in Dubai in an operation they called “Fox Hunt 2”. Dubai Police
seized cash worth more than 40 million US dollars and 13 different exotic cars! They confiscated 21
different computers and 47 phones! They also got files with addresses of close to 2
MILLION different possible victims. Yeah, Hushpuppi didn’t run a small operation here.
They handed him over to FBI agents who flew him back to Chicago personally in July of 2020!
$124 Million Heist? The biggest heist that Innocenti uncovered was
Huppuppi’s plot to scam an English Premier League soccer team! In the criminal complaint filed by
the FBI, Innocenti notes that one of the members of Hushpuppi’s team actually sent the name of an
English Premier League team and listed the club’s address as the stadium where the club plays.
Apparently they had some scheme to scam some unnamed English Premier soccer team of 100
million pounds! Just for reference, the record for the biggest transfer was 105 million pounds. What
was the exact plan here? This sounds like this was a scam that may have been something TOO ambitious.
IG Influencer When Hushpuppi finally
had his day in court, his lawyer defended him by calling him an entrepreneur who made his money
legitimately through selling real estate and promoting brands as an Instagram personality.
Supposedly, Hushpuppi was able to support his lifestyle by promoting
designer products on Instagram. He posed with high-priced items because
that's what he got paid to do! Well, at least that's what his lawyer argued.
Hushpuppi DID have over two and a half million followers. But even with that follower count,
there’s almost no way he’d be able to make the amount of money he looked like he made. Not
strictly from promoting big brands. As for selling real estate? No one can find any transactions.
Plus, he got famous BECAUSE of what he posted on Instagram.
He wasn’t famous for anything else. How did he get the money
in the first place? We’re going to say this case probably won’t go well for Hushpuppi.
What do you think?