{"id":19462,"date":"2021-07-29T08:19:18","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T12:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=19462"},"modified":"2021-07-29T08:19:18","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T12:19:18","slug":"hushpuppi-nigerian-influencer-pleads-guilty-to-money-laundering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2021\/07\/29\/hushpuppi-nigerian-influencer-pleads-guilty-to-money-laundering\/","title":{"rendered":"Hushpuppi: Nigerian influencer pleads guilty to money laundering"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nigerian influencer Ramon Abbas – also known as Hushpuppi – has pleaded guilty to money laundering in a US court.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hushpuppi, 37, is known for posting photos of his lavish lifestyle on Instagram, where he has 2.5m followers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Court documents filed in California said Hushpuppi’s crimes cost victims almost $24m (\u00a317m) in total.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In one scheme, Hushpuppi attempted to steal more than $1.1m from someone who wanted to fund a new children’s school in Qatar, the documents said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Court records unsealed this week show he pleaded guilty to this charge on 20 April.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The documents state that between 18 January 2019 and 9 June 2020, Hushpuppi and others targeted multiple victims and laundered the illicit funds in banks all over the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They add that he could face up to 20 years in prison, and will need to “pay full restitution to the victim(s)”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hushpuppi was arrested in Dubai, where he lived, in June 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In\u00a0a statement<\/a>, acting United States Attorney Tracy Wilkinson said Hushpuppi and others faked the financing of the school “by playing the roles of bank officials and creating a bogus website”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They also “bribed a foreign official to keep the elaborate pretence going after the victim was tipped off”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hushpuppi, who she said “played a significant role” in the scam, “funded his luxurious lifestyle by laundering illicit proceeds generated by con artists”.<\/p>\n

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Kristi Johnson, acting director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said Hushpuppi was one of the “most high-profile money launderers in the world”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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His “celebrity status and ability to make connections seeped into legitimate organisations and led to several spin-off schemes in the US and abroad”, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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His guilty plea was “a crucial blow to this international network”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigerian influencer Ramon Abbas – also known as Hushpuppi – has pleaded guilty to money laundering in a US court. Hushpuppi, 37, is known for posting photos of his lavish lifestyle on Instagram, where he […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[177,1695,1484],"class_list":{"0":"post-19462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-los-angeles","11":"tag-money-laundering","12":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19465,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19462\/revisions\/19465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}