Nigerian fraudster Hushpuppi was removed from Instagram before being sentenced | Tech Reddy

A Nigerian influencer known as Hushpuppi arrested in Dubai for financial crimes worth tens of millions of dollars is scheduled to be sentenced by a California court on Monday.

Ramon Abbas could face up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering in July 2021.

He was extradited to the United States in July 2020, a month after a public raid at his luxury five-star hotel in Dubai.

According to court documents, Abbas’ crimes are worth about $24 million. Prosecutors allege the fraud was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In one scheme, he tried to steal more than $1.1m from someone who wanted to fund a new children’s school in Qatar.

Court records unsealed in July last year show he pleaded guilty to the charge on April 20, 2021.

U.S. authorities said Abbas and his accomplices were bank officials and created a fake website to defraud the school’s finances.

The gang also hired a foreign agent to keep the scam going after the victim found out.

Instagram account has been disabled

Hushpuppi’s Instagram account – which she used as a platform to share her lifestyle with her 2.8 million followers – appears to have been deleted.

When looking for an account, The National sent to an Instagram post saying the page was unavailable and “may have been taken down”.

The account showed photos of Abbas’s style, including stepping out of a helicopter at Dubai’s Atlantis The Palm resort and picking up a new Rolls-Royce Cullinan.

Kristi Johnson, director of the Los Angeles FBI office, told BBC News that Abbas was one of the “world’s most famous financiers”, who worked in the open and not in the shadows.

About $41m in cash and 13 cars worth about $6.8m were seized, along with phone and computer evidence containing more than 100,000 fraud files.

In addition, the email addresses of nearly two million victims were discovered, Dubai Police said at the time.

Instagram was contacted for comment.

Updated: November 01, 2022, 12:33 PM