A Nigerian Instagram star conspired with North Korean hackers to steal more than $1.3 billion from companies and banks in the U.S. and other countries, federal prosecutors said.
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, 37, also known as “Ray Hushpuppi,” is being accused of helping three North Korean computer hackers steal the funds from companies and banks, including one in Malta, in February 2019, according to the Justice Department.
“North Korea’s operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash, are the world’s leading bank robbers,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in a statement on Feb. 17.
Abbas — who has 2.5 million followers on Instagram, where he would post photos of his luxury cars — somehow found time for still more banking-related crimes, the feds say.
He worked with Ghaleb Alaumary, 37, a Canadian who was charged with laundering millions of dollars from ATMs in the U.S. and Pakistan and a bank in India, prosecutors say.
Last July, the Nigerian national was arrested in still another, separate case.
He was extradited from Dubai to the U.S. where he was charged with “laundering hundreds of millions of dollars from business email compromise (BEC) frauds and other scams, including schemes targeting a US law firm, a foreign bank and an English Premier League soccer club,” according to the Justice Department.
