Hushpuppi Struck Plea Bargain Deal With United States Attorney

Hushpuppi’s trial was initially scheduled for 27 July. It has now been postponed to a date to be determined later.

Ramon Olorunwa Abbas aka Ray Hushpuppi has struck a plea bargain deal with the United States Attorney’s office for the Central District of California over his cybercrime and money laundering charge.

Hushpuppi will change his not guilty plea to plead guilty in federal court.

He will plead guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering, of funds from business email compromise scams and other online heists.

The document was signed 4 July 2021 by Hushpuppi, his lawyer Louis J. Shapiro and assistant U.S. attorney, Anil J. Antony.

A Twitter post by Evan Ratliff, a journalist with Bloomberg first drew attention to the heavily redacted 29-page document, which also disclosed some of the uses Hushpuppi deployed the proceeds of crime.

In one instance, he bought a luxury Richard Mille wristwatch at a cost of $230,000.

In another, he wired $50,000 to an agent to procure St. Kitt and Nevis Citizenship.

The passport of the small country was delivered to Hushpuppi in Dubai last year February, just months before he was arrested by the Dubai Police and the FBI in June last year.

He was thereafter extradited to Chicago, along with another Nigerian alleged fraudster Olalekan Jacob Ponle, also known as Woodberry and 10 others.

Weeks after, he was transferred to California, where he has made a plea bargain.

In the plea bargain document Hushpuppi admitted to laundering money from the Malta Bank heist and the BEC attacks on a Premier League club, another UK firm, and an American law firm, as well as additional schemes.

As noted in the document the victims of Hushpuppi and his co-conspirators and the amount stolen were classified as:

*Foreign Financial Institutions $14,700,000

*UK companies: $7,740,000

*Qatari Victim: $809,983

*New York Law Firm : $922,857.

Hushpuppi’s plea agreement, which involved crimes allegedly perpetrated by North Korean state-sponsored hackers, was heavily redacted, and many of the filings in the case remain sealed.

Some of the highlights of the plea bargain are:

* Hushpuppi will restitute the sum of $1,732, 841 as minimum. It could be more, if the court decides.

*He has given up the right to appeal