Nigerian Instagram star Hushpuppi aided North Korea hackers, says US

Ramon Abbas, known as Hushpuppi, was extradited from Dubai last year to face money laundering charges in America

Ramon Abbas was extradited to the US after his arrest in Dubai in 2020. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail on Monday, November 7, 2022. Photo: Dubai Police

Hushpuppi posed as a property investor and businessman. Pictures from his Instagram account – which had more than two million followers before it was shut down – showed him landing at Atlantis, The Palm in a helicopter. Photo: Dubai Police

Police said they had sought Hushpuppi after he was implicated in an online fraud. Photo: Dubai Police

A police video showed the suspect apparently admitting and explaining how the fraud worked. Photo: Dubai Police

A police video showed arrests at luxury properties in Dubai. Photo: Dubai Police

Hushpuppi was arrested along with 11 others, some of whom are pictured here. Photo: Dubai Police

Officers seized 13 luxury cars worth an estimated Dh25 million ($6.8m). The vehicles had been paid for with victims' money. Photo: Dubai Police

Hushpuppi with a Rolls-Royce in Dubai. The National

A Nigerian social media celebrity extradited from Dubai last year helped North Korean hackers launder money stolen from a Maltese bank, US officials said.

Ramon Olorunwa Abbas played a supporting role in cyber scams perpetrated by three computer programmers accused of extorting more than $1.3 billion of cash and cryptocurrency, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

Mr Abbas, who is widely known as “Hushpuppi” and is in US custody while awaiting trial, has 2.5 million followers on Instagram where he regularly posted photographs posing with luxury cars or boarding private jets.

North Korean state operatives “are the world’s leading bank robbers,” John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said, after revealing the indictment of Jon Chang Hyok, Kim Il and Park Jin Hyok.

The trio and other unidentified North Koreans were involved in the hack of Sony Pictures in 2014 and the attempted theft of about $1bn from Bangladesh’s central bank in 2016, according to the US government.

More recently, the group has focused on stealing cryptocurrencies, according to prosecutors.

The hackers allegedly turned to a network including Mr Abbas “to launder funds from a North Korean-perpetrated cyber-enabled heist” from an unidentified Maltese bank in February 2019.

The Nigerian worked with a Canadian, Ghaleb Alaumary, who US officials accused of organising teams to launder millions of dollars stolen by hacking automated teller machines, including in Pakistan and in India, according to the Justice Department.

Mr Alaumary, 37, began co-operating with US authorities in October 2019 and secretly signed a plea agreement last November, according to court papers unsealed in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Hushpuppi a wanted man

Mr Abbas was extradited in July from Dubai to the US where he faces criminal charges of allegedly conspiring to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from "business email compromise" frauds and other scams.

Gal Pissetzky, Mr Abbas’s former lawyer, told Forbes magazine in July 2020 that he was “absolutely not guilty” of those charges and hadn’t taken part in any fraud. Mr Pissetzky and Mr Abbas’s other lawyer both quit the defence in January.

The Nigerian was part of a group that allegedly tricked a paralegal at a US law firm into wiring them almost $923,000 in October 2019, according to US authorities.

He and a partner also are accused of plotting to steal £100 million pounds ($125 million) from an unnamed football club in the English Premier League.