Photo: Instagram / Hushpuppi / DoJ
Not that more proof was needed, but we really shouldn’t take anything we see on social media at face value. The final chapter in the saga of Hushpuppi, self-styled billionaire slash Instagram car collector, has wrapped – and that ending spells “jail.”
Ray Hushpuppi, as he was known to his more than 2.7 million followers on just one of his social media platforms, presented an image of a lifestyle of total and complete luxury. Expensive cars, frequent flights onboard his own private jet, designer outfits (that usually matched the car he was driving or being driven in on any given day), and humble brags about how he was out there hassling while keeping it real turned Hushpuppi into a viral star.
In June 2020, the Instagram car collector was arrested at his apartment at the super-exclusive Palazzo Versace resort in Dubai and handed over to the FBI for extradition to the U.S. Authorities retrieved some $41 million in cash from the premises, together with a fleet of 13 luxury cars estimated at another $6.8 million and which had already been shown off on social media.
Hushpuppi, the U.S. Department of Justice would argue in the subsequent trial, was no hard-working real estate developer as he described himself, and definitely not the Billionaire Gucci Master, his previous moniker. He was the ringleader of a massive and well-organized scam ring that had targeted international victims and, in the process, caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The former Billionaire Gucci Master, now reduced to his birthname of Ramon Abbas, would later plead guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering and admit to running the online scam operation.
Forbes reports that Abbas has been sentenced to 11 years behind bars in the United States, after which he will be deported back to Nigeria. He will also have to pay $1.7 million in restitution to two of his victims. It is a suitable but ironic closure for the Nigerian, who got his start as a “Yahoo Boy,” as a 2021 BBC investigation revealed.
Like many other young and poor Nigerians, Abbas too got his start in online scamming by siphoning money off romance victims. The larger international scheme he would later run was a riff on his “Yahoo Boy” days, possible by means of BEC (Business Email Compromise) and obviously on an entirely different level – the kind that enabled him to splurge on Rolls-Royces and Ferraris, custom McLarens and Bentleys.
#AllMine, Hushpuppi would often tag his car photos while he lived the celebrity lifestyle, rubbing elbows with real celebrities and public figures. #NotAnymore, the tag would read today if he still had a social media account.
In June 2020, the Instagram car collector was arrested at his apartment at the super-exclusive Palazzo Versace resort in Dubai and handed over to the FBI for extradition to the U.S. Authorities retrieved some $41 million in cash from the premises, together with a fleet of 13 luxury cars estimated at another $6.8 million and which had already been shown off on social media.
Hushpuppi, the U.S. Department of Justice would argue in the subsequent trial, was no hard-working real estate developer as he described himself, and definitely not the Billionaire Gucci Master, his previous moniker. He was the ringleader of a massive and well-organized scam ring that had targeted international victims and, in the process, caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The former Billionaire Gucci Master, now reduced to his birthname of Ramon Abbas, would later plead guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering and admit to running the online scam operation.
Forbes reports that Abbas has been sentenced to 11 years behind bars in the United States, after which he will be deported back to Nigeria. He will also have to pay $1.7 million in restitution to two of his victims. It is a suitable but ironic closure for the Nigerian, who got his start as a “Yahoo Boy,” as a 2021 BBC investigation revealed.
Like many other young and poor Nigerians, Abbas too got his start in online scamming by siphoning money off romance victims. The larger international scheme he would later run was a riff on his “Yahoo Boy” days, possible by means of BEC (Business Email Compromise) and obviously on an entirely different level – the kind that enabled him to splurge on Rolls-Royces and Ferraris, custom McLarens and Bentleys.
#AllMine, Hushpuppi would often tag his car photos while he lived the celebrity lifestyle, rubbing elbows with real celebrities and public figures. #NotAnymore, the tag would read today if he still had a social media account.
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