Paper Trail: How FBI Tracked Hushpuppi, Cohorts Via Their Google, Apple Accounts

More revelations have begun to emerge concerning the daredevil fraudulent exploits of internet celebrity, Ramon Abbas, better known as Hushpuppi, and his accomplices.

Hushpuppi was arrested in Dubai in June but later extradited to the US following a plethora of criminal activities which he allegedly masterminded.

The internet celebrity has been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering in the United States,  he was in court on Friday for commencement of his trial for which he could spend twenty years in prison if convicted.

Following his arrest, many averred that hushpuppi’s flamboyant, opulent lifestyle and his unbridled display of wealth on social media were his undoing and might have contributed significantly to the unravelling of his sharp practices and his subsequent arrest.

But new revelation has shown that there’s more to the uncovering of hushpuppi’s intricate and mind-blowing criminal endeavours than his social media glamour, recent documents from America’s intelligence agency show that painstaking and onerous investigations that involved cracking of encrypted messages were deployed to clip the wing of the cyber carpetbaggers.

According to documents from the office of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which are seen by EkoHotBlog, hushpuppi’s Google and Apple accounts are some of the things that made it easy for the intelligence agency to track him and his Cohorts.

In a document signed by Andrew Innocenti, a special agent of the FBI, three people — Abbas, co-conspirator 1 and co-conspirator 2 — were accused of participating in fraudulent schemes involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to the FBI, an analysis of the iPhone and online account belonging to co-conspirator 1 showed that messages were exchanged with Hushpuppi, requesting accounts into which funds realised from the money laundering schemes could be sent to.

“Based on records from Instagram received in June 2020, the Instagram account was subscribed with the name “RAY,” the email address, [email protected], and the verified phone number +971502818689 (“Phone Number 2”),” the document read.

“The Instagram account was created on October 10, 2012, and recent account history from 2020 showed logins from Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses located in the U.A.E.2 (ABBAS lives in the U.A.E., based on information from his email and social media accounts, financial records, and internet research).

“Based on subscriber records from Snap Inc., the Snapchat account “Hushpuppi5” used the phone number +971565505984 (“Phone Number 3”) and the email address [email protected] (i.e., the same email as the Instagram account).

“The Snapchat account used the display name “The Billionaire Gucci Master!!!,” which was the same Snapchat contact name saved in Coconspirator 1’s phone for the Snapchat account “Hushpuppi5.”

The document also gave details of records from Apple Inc., as well as his Gmail account, which showed invoices, tenancy contract, flight itinerary, Dubai visa, a Nigerian passport, among other documents all directly linked to Abbas.

Details of a conversation between the suspects were also divulged.

“On February 12, 2019, Co-conspirator 1 told ABBAS: “Wire is completed… We did it [500k euros]… Should be on ur side by now.”

In the ensuing conversation, Co-conspirator 1 reportedly told Abbas that there was only one wire to the account in Romania. “Sender name : tipico group limited. Country : [Foreign Financial Institution Country] Amount : 500k euro…

“It’s there now my other crew confirmed it’s there as well.”

Later, while trying to confirm whether the wire was successful, co-conspirator 1 was said to have added: “They did me 3 wires (2 to euro 1 to USA)… Bank it came from is :[Foreign Financial Institution].

The document added that the sender wrote: “Brother, we still have access and they didn’t realize, we gonna shoot again tomoro am.”

The criminal complaint filed against Abbas is published here

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