. Arraign him in US court
Alleged international internet scammer and Instagram influencer, Ramoni Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, was on Friday arraigned before a United States court, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation accused him of attempt to dupe an English Premier League football club of £100m (N48.4bn).
The allegation is contained in an affidavit deposed to by FBI Special Agent, Andre Innocenti, who is assigned to the Los Angeles Filed Office High-tech Organise Crime Squad.
FBI said the suspect is facing charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, among others.
According to the affidavit, “Abbas and others further conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from other fraudulent schemes and computer intrusions, including one scheme to steal £100 million (approximately $124 million) from an English Premier League soccer club.”
FBI further stated that if the suspect is convicted, he risks spending 20 years in jail.
“If convicted of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, Abbas would face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison,” the FBI said.
The affidavit alleges that Hushpuppi and others committed a Business Email Compromise scam that defrauded a client of a New York-based law firm out of approximately $922,857 (N350.6m) in October 2019.
The FBI said that Hushpuppi and his accomplices allegedly tricked one of the law firm’s paralegals into wiring money intended for the client’s real estate refinancing to a bank account that was controlled by the suspect and his collaborators.
US government also accused Hushpuppi of conspiring to launder funds stolen in a $14.7m (N5.5bn) cyber-heist from a foreign financial institution in February 2019, in which the stolen money was sent to bank accounts around the world.
Hushpuppi was alleged to have provided a co-conspirator with two bank accounts in Europe that he anticipated each would receive €5million (N2.1bn) of the fraudulently obtained funds.