Hushpuppi: Report of $400,000 scam false, document fabricated – US DoJ tells Neusroom
The United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for Central District of California has told Neusroom that viral reports claiming Nigeria’s celebrity hacker Ramon Abass Olorunwa ‘Hushpuppi’ laundered $400,000, is false
There are multiple reports on the internet on Thursday, March 17, 2022, with news blogs and social media users claiming Hushpuppi, who’s presently in detention in Los Angeles, masterminded a $400,000 fraud from detention.
The reports excerpted documents purportedly filed by an FBI agent Andrew John Innocent before Hon Rozella Oliver, a US Magistrate Judge, on March 16, 2022.
The document reviewed by Neusroom claimed Hushpuppi “bought and laundered economic impact payments debit cards worth $429,800” for a period of seven days on a cybercriminal marketplace.
Thom Mrozek, the spokesperson of the USAO for Central District of California, in an email sent to Neusroom on Thursday, said “the document was fabricated.”
“After looking at the document excerpted in recent media accounts, the document appears to have been fabricated,” Mrozek wrote.
“The US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, which filed the case against Mr. Abbas, has not filed any such document. We have checked with the FBI agent who supposedly authored the document, and he confirms it is a fake.”
Hushpuppi has spent more than 20 months in detention in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and Los Angeles in the US. The Department of Justice told Neusroom he would be sentenced on July 11, 2022.
His sentencing was shifted for the fourth time in February after Neusroom had, on Wednesday, January 26, 2022, exclusively reported that Hushpuppi would be sentenced on Valentine’s Day.
