A Nigerian influencer who amassed millions of Instagram followers posting images of his luxury lifestyle and motivational messages has admitted being a con-man.
Ramon Abbas, 37, who is known to his fans as Hushpuppi or the Billionaire Gucci Master, has admitted to conning at least $24million out of businesses around the world including $1million meant for a children's hospital in Qatar.
Abbas - who grew up the son of a taxi-driver father and bread-seller mother in a poor town near Lagos before moving to a penthouse in Dubai - now faces spending the next 20 years of his life behind bars in the US.
Other targets included a Maltese bank and several companies linked to an unnamed Premier League football club.
Ramon Abbas, 37, known to his online followers as Raay Hushpuppi, has admitted defrauding businesses and individuals out of at least $24million in online scams
Abbas had amassed some 2.5million Instagram followers by flaunting images of his super-luxe lifestyle alongside motivational messages to 'never give up'
Kristi Johnson, who leads the FBI's office in LA, said Abbas was 'among the most high-profile money launderers in the world' and was part of a network that defrauded businesses across the globe - though many of his victims were in the US.
Acting US attorney Tracy L. Wilkison added: 'Mr. Abbas, who played a significant role in the scheme, funded his luxurious lifestyle by laundering illicit proceeds generated by con artists who use increasingly sophisticated means.
'In conjunction with our law enforcement partners, we will identify and prosecute perpetrators of business email compromise scams, which is a massive and growing international crime problem.'
The FBI says Abbas and his network tricked businesses into handing over large sums of money using business email compromise - or BEC - attacks.
BEC attacks work by compromising the email accounts of companies or high-ranking business figures which routinely transfer large amounts of money.
Once the email accounts have been compromised - typically using crude phishing attacks which rely on users clicking a malicious link - the fraudsters wait until a large invoice is sent or received by the targets.
Abbas grew up the son of a taxi driver in Lagos, Nigeria, before moving to Dubai where he claimed to be a real estate investor
They then duplicate the invoice in exact like-for-like copy, and re-send it from an email address that appears identical to the original sender - only changing the recipient bank account for one that they control.
Typically, such an email is accompanied by an apology for getting the original account details wrong.
Such emails are often backed up by fake websites that duplicate the original client's site, and phone numbers that closely mirror genuine ones.
Once the money is wired to that account, it is split up and spread out to bank accounts across the world with profits divided up among the scammers.
The FBI estimates that such attacks made up around 40 per cent of all money made from cybercrime
