US Court To Sentence Hushpuppi Sept. 21

Thom Mrozek, the Director of Media Relations, United States Attorney’s Office for Central District of California, Los Angeles, has confirmed that Internet fraudster, Ramon Abbas, popularly known as Hushpuppi, will be sentenced on September 21, 2022.

This was disclosed via email by him on Friday.

Hushpuppi’s sentence date had been moved three times since his conviction in 2021. Valentine’s February 14 date was first chosen for his sentencing before it was postponed to July 11, and now September 21.

The court official, Thom Mrozek, said Hushpuppi, who had pleaded guilty to the alleged $1.1m fraud last year, “…is currently scheduled to be sentenced by a federal judge in Los Angeles on September 21”.

The Billionaire Gucci Blaiso · Instagram influencer (Hushpuppi) is facing criminal charges in the United States for conspiracy to launder money obtained from business email compromise frauds and other scams, including schemes that defrauded a US law firm of about $40 million, illegally transferred $14.7 million from a foreign financial institution, and targeted to steal $124 million from an English football club until his arrest by the Dubai Police in June 2020 and his extradition to the United States.

Hushpuppi posted pictures and videos of his lavish spending on exotic cars, watches, designer clothes, bags from expensive brands like Gucci, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton and of himself boarding helicopters, with celebrities, footballers, and Nigerian politicians or while on charter jets.

He claimed to be a real estate developer.

On the night his apartment at the Palazzo Versace was raided in an operation code-named Fox Hunt 2, Abbas was arrested alongside 11 others in six simultaneous raids, detectives seized more than 150 million dirham (about $40 million) in cash, 13 luxury cars worth Dh 25 million ($7m), 21 laptops, 47 smartphones, 15 memory storage devices, 5 external hard drives and 800,000 emails of potential victims alongside suitcases full of cash.

The arrest was part of an FBI investigation that indicted him as being a ‘key player’ in a transnational cybercrime network that provided “safe havens for stolen money around the world.