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The Fall of the World's Flashiest Scammer - YouTube
Channel: Bloomberg Quicktake: Originals
[10]
$5,000, don't kill yourself.
[15]
I first heard about Ramon
Abbas when he was arrested,
[20]
it was a pretty big
international news story.
[22]
He was arrested in Dubai,
[24]
and he was very quickly
extradited to the U.S.
[30]
Ramon Abbas, also known as Hushpuppi,
[33]
was responsible for a number of
[36]
business email compromise scams.
[40]
But what he was most known for was being
[42]
an Instagram influencer who built
[45]
a following of millions of people.
[47]
And it was always very mysterious
[48]
where his money actually came from.
[52]
According to the affidavit,
[53]
he was charged with $30
million worth of fraud.
[61]
Hushpuppi is the number
one Yahoo boy in Nigeria.
[65]
He's a role model to every
Yahoo boy in Nigeria.
[70]
There are ways to look at Hushpuppi,
[73]
not as some kind of hero,
[75]
but you can respect some
of the things that he did.
[78]
And the way that he thrived
[79]
in our current online
social media ecosystem.
[85]
One of the things people would ask me was
[87]
"Why did he post to Instagram?
[88]
He should have just kept a low profile."
[90]
My answer ultimately was,
[92]
why do you post on social media?
[93]
He was doing it for the
same reasons we all do it,
[96]
to get some response from people,
[98]
to feel his place in the
world grow and be respected.
[102]
G for Gucci.
[106]
When you look at the story from one layer
[109]
it's very simplistic.
[110]
But the deeper you get into it
[111]
the more you see the complexities around
[114]
how someone like Hushpuppi
exists in the modern world.
[124]
Ramon grew up in a neighborhood of Lagos
[127]
called Oworonshoki.
[129]
It's a bit of a hardscrabble neighborhood.
[131]
His father drove a taxi,
[133]
his mother sold bread and
other foods on the street.
[136]
By his own account he always looked
[139]
to the ritzier areas of
Lagos as a kind of dreamer.
[143]
And he wanted to have more for himself.
[147]
Today we have an exclusive inside look
[149]
at the internet scam that has
been sweeping this country
[152]
based out of Nigeria.
[155]
When the internet arrived
late '90s, early 2000s
[158]
in places like Ramon Abbas' neighborhood,
[161]
people would go down to the internet cafe.
[163]
And one of the things
that Nigerians discovered
[166]
when they logged on was that oftentimes
[169]
there was sort of a reputation
that proceeded them online.
[172]
They were already viewed
as being scammers,
[175]
because of the 419 scams
of the '80s and '90s,
[178]
which were either phone,
or fax, or letter scams.
[182]
This coincided as well with
[184]
more difficult economic
times within Nigeria,
[187]
fewer job prospects.
[189]
And so there was a community
who embraced that label
[192]
who decided, "Okay,
[194]
I will figure out how
to make money online.
[196]
I will figure out how to
take advantage of people."
[198]
And they're actually
incredibly innovative.
[200]
It started as it almost always does
[202]
with an email.
[203]
There was a community of young boys
[206]
who became known as the Yahoo boys,
[208]
based on the free email
accounts that were available,
[210]
for this type of scamming.
[215]
I spoke to a criminologist
in Nigeria, Adedeji,
[219]
he spent a lot of time with Yahoo boys.
[221]
And he actually lived for a
time among them to study them,
[226]
to understand their motivations,
[227]
to understand their techniques,
[229]
to see what became of them over time.
[231]
And he knew a lot of the same
people in Ramon's circle.
[237]
I have a very good relationship with them
[239]
because I saw them as human beings.
[243]
It was very popular in the slums.
[247]
Areas like Bariga,
[250]
Ajibola,
[251]
Ijora,
[252]
Mushin.
[253]
Because these are places where
you have a lot of young boys
[255]
who have very little life chances.
[260]
Hushpuppi, Ramon Abbas,
[262]
at that time he was one
of the very smart boys.
[267]
He went very far, he met a lot
of people who could help him
[272]
improve on the skills of cyber crime.
[274]
Knowing that the kind of cyber crime
[276]
we had in Nigeria in the early days
[280]
was close to the 419, the letter scam.
[284]
He moved from Nigeria to Malaysia.
[288]
And at the time in particular,
[289]
there was a sort of exodus of Yahoo boys
[293]
from Nigeria to Malaysia.
[298]
There are a variety of theories
about why they moved there.
[301]
The possibility that it
was a little more lax,
[304]
that the Nigerian government
[305]
was paying a little more
attention at that time.
[307]
Also because there was
[309]
more sophisticated internet
architecture there,
[312]
in terms of how you
could hide the location
[314]
that your requests were coming from.
[318]
He moved so that way he could
[319]
have access to all of the tools.
[322]
He wanted more information than
what every other person had,
[326]
and that was why he became what
most of them did not become.
[334]
It seems like he was connected to
[336]
several different flavors of scams.
[339]
One of which was business
email compromise,
[341]
which is the most lucrative
internet scam that exists.
[346]
Well today one of the
largest scams attacking users
[349]
is called the business email compromise.
[352]
The business email compromise
[354]
seems really, really sophisticated.
[356]
And during my career I've dealt
with hundreds of these incidents,
[360]
the bad guys are able to compromise
[363]
an email account of a business.
[365]
It could be a small business,
[367]
it could be a large business,
[369]
and it involves financial transactions.
[372]
You have a company,
[374]
and the company is going to
be targeted by the scammers.
[378]
And usually they'll research the company,
[380]
they're trying to find the right person.
[383]
And what they do is, a hacker
[385]
gets access to someone's email account.
[387]
So usually middle manager,
[389]
or someone in the accounting
department of a company.
[393]
Once they're in the email, they
don't actually do anything,
[396]
they just sit there and they wait.
[398]
And they watch the flow
of email in and out,
[401]
and when they see invoices
that's what they're looking for.
[403]
When an invoice comes in
they might spoof the email
[406]
of the sender of the invoice.
[408]
Mock up a fake invoice
[410]
that looks exactly like
the one that just came in,
[412]
and then send a follow up email saying,
[414]
"This was not the correct
bank account information,
[417]
this is the new bank."
[419]
If the financial department
is not looking carefully,
[422]
then they are prone to sending
the money right out the door.
[426]
That's essentially what BEC scams are.
[428]
Someone asked for this money
who's not the right person,
[431]
and you've sent them millions of dollars.
[433]
$20,000 here, okay?
[435]
$20,000.
I just spent $20,000.
[439]
Ramon had picked up the
handle Hushpuppi in,
[443]
I think 2012.
[445]
But it was really when he got to Malaysia
[448]
that he started posting
photos, mostly of himself.
[454]
It was a kid from Lagos on the rise,
[458]
here are the luxury brands
that I'm now consuming.
[460]
And he started mixing that
with a self-help mantras,
[465]
and a sort of prosperity gospel.
[468]
You know, the hustle.
[470]
His followers started
ticking up over time.
[473]
And then Hushpuppi began
a friendship with Mompha,
[478]
who's a very, very well
known influencer in Nigeria
[481]
and Mompha lived in Dubai.
[483]
That seems like the time
when he started to see
[486]
that there was another level of opulence,
[489]
there was another tier of
lifestyle that he could be living.
[494]
And so he packed up for
Malaysia, moved himself to Dubai.
[503]
When he moved to Dubai he
really entered this world of
[507]
truly high wealth individuals.
[509]
Which included obtaining
a penthouse apartment,
[512]
closets full of designer clothes.
[515]
Shelves of unopened sneakers,
[517]
sneakers that had only been made once,
[519]
sneakers that have been
made specifically for him.
[522]
And a basement parking
garage that was full of cars,
[525]
like Ferraris, Bentleys.
[528]
He's sometimes now
flying on private planes,
[531]
he's one of the guests of
honor at the Formula One race.
[534]
He's being invited to events in Dubai,
[536]
and so he's entered this upper crust
[539]
of some of the most wealthy
people in the world.
[541]
Everybody want to talk about Hushpuppi,
[543]
Hushpuppi do this, Hushpuppi do that.
[545]
Leave me alone, talk about yourself.
[549]
The difference between Hushpuppi
[551]
and the other Yahoo boys,
[553]
is the fact that he went international.
[558]
Then he went to the social media to
[561]
show off all of these things.
[563]
But as for recklessness,
there are all reckless,
[567]
even those who are not on
the international scenes
[571]
are also reckless.
[572]
That's where they live.
[577]
So at Hushpuppi's 37th birthday,
[579]
it was all kind of at that moment
[581]
it felt like it was really
coming together for a Hushpuppi.
[583]
And he posted about that,
[585]
he posted about how far he had come.
[588]
While that birthday
celebration was happening
[590]
the seeds of Hushpuppi's
downfall had already been sewn.
[595]
Well, he made the cardinal
sin in organized crime,
[599]
he flaunted his wealth.
[601]
He brought a lot of attention to himself,
[604]
he made himself appear
to be a national hero.
[608]
But when you were out there,
[609]
and you are flaunting
all of this information,
[612]
there's so much open source intelligence
[615]
that he was just providing about himself.
[619]
The FBI arrested a
Canadian money launderer,
[623]
and his name is Ghaleb Alaumary.
[626]
When they arrested Alaumary
he had a phone on him
[631]
in which there were
contacts for Hushpuppi.
[633]
And there were message
exchanges with Hushpuppi.
[638]
What they came to believe was that
[640]
Alaumary and Hushpuppi were part of
[643]
a loosely networked
group of people who were
[647]
committing BEC scams, and moving
the money around the world.
[651]
Oftentimes there would
be hackers who would
[653]
hack into the email accounts.
[655]
And the FBI later concluded these were
[658]
North Korean state sponsored hackers,
[660]
who had actually committed
billions of dollars
[662]
worth of crime around the
world over the past 10 years.
[665]
Alaumary would connect up with Hushpuppi,
[667]
ask him if he had any bank accounts.
[669]
And when a big BE score
was about to happen
[672]
Hushpuppi would provide a bank account
[673]
that could receive millions of dollars
[676]
that were about to be
transferred out of a company.
[679]
The crimes that they were accused of
[680]
included the large-scale
hacking of a bank in Malta
[684]
for $13 million.
[686]
A BEC scam on an American law firm
[688]
for just under a million dollars.
[690]
The biggest one was an attempted BEC scam
[693]
on two U.K. companies,
[696]
both of which were for around
a hundred million dollars.
[699]
And one of which was
[700]
an English premier league football team.
[705]
In early June, June 8th,
Hushpuppi was asleep upstairs
[709]
on the second floor of his apartment.
[712]
There was a bang on the door,
[714]
and then suddenly the apartment
[716]
was full of people with guns.
[718]
At first he thought they were
victims of an armed robbery,
[720]
but then it quickly turned out
it was the Dubai SWAT team.
[722]
And they'd come in fully kitted up,
[724]
and they were ready for war.
[726]
He was whisked onto a
plane within, I think,
[729]
24 to 48 hours and sent to the U.S.
[732]
If you are to classify Hushpuppi,
[733]
how would you classify him?
[735]
Busted.
[738]
I give a lot of credit to the FBI agents
[741]
who arrested Hushpuppi.
[742]
But we are not going to arrest
our way out of this problem.
[747]
We took one bad guy off the streets,
[749]
but how many more of them are out there?
[756]
I think even though we believe Mr Abbas
[759]
is a major player in this,
[762]
he's only a bit player in
the entire infrastructure
[765]
of the complete organization.
[768]
There are just so many actors,
[770]
and so many elements in these schemes,
[772]
including organized crime
in places like Russia,
[775]
and places like Brazil.
[777]
That it's really, really
hard to make a dent I think
[781]
in the power of the BEC scam.
[793]
To me one of the tragedies
of this whole situation
[797]
is that because of the reputation
of scamming in Nigeria,
[803]
law enforcement there,
[804]
particularly with the
Special Anti-Robbery Squad,
[807]
they ended up using
scammers and Yahoo boys
[810]
as just a pretext.
[814]
All of a sudden down the street
arresting every young guy
[817]
for being involved in cyber
crime without any evidence.
[824]
They just pack a group of young boys,
[826]
they force them to say a
lot of things and them poom.
[830]
It became one of the reasons why we had
[833]
what we had in Nigeria last year.
[836]
For weeks now there
have been demonstrations
[838]
against police brutality
[840]
across Africa's most populous country.
[843]
Protestors accused the now disbanded
[845]
Special Anti-Robbery
Squad, or SARS, of torture.
[848]
They've been notorious for
extrajudicial killings, and
[854]
harassment, especially of young Nigerians.
[858]
End SARS in Nigeria was
a big deal last year,
[862]
a lot of lives were lost.
[863]
And up to this moment
[864]
we are still trying to
pacify young people.
[873]
Cyber crime is not a problem of Nigeria
[878]
or for Nigeria,
[880]
it's a problem from
every part of the world.
[884]
We need a global cyber crime law,
[887]
if we have a law,
[888]
and we also have global
law enforcement agencies,
[891]
then we are moving towards
managing cyber crime.
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