Hushpuppi! End of the road for an unrepentant playboy.
3 min read
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, popularly known as Hushpuppi is a Nigerian of Yoruba origin. He had always loved good things of live and really wanted to live a good life. During his school days, he was always in the habit of talking about money and wealthy men anytime he and his friends were together. For Abbas, everything starts and ends with money. He really wanted to be a part of these groups of men who dictate the tone the pipe must follow. In order to realize this dream, Olorunwa Abbas whose original name is Ramoni Igbalode made up his mind to travel out of Nigeria.
Malaysia was his dream country where he thought he could perhaps hit it big. Umuaka Times gathered that Hushpuppi was in Malaysia briefly before travelling to Dubai in UAE to settle. In Dubai, Hushpuppi got exactly what he had dreamt of. He almost instantly became a big boy. Although his Instagram handle which has over 2.5 million followers claimed he was into real estate business, he was not involved in entertainments like sports, music or film acting and production but daily, he kept drawing popularity to himself through the internet and fearless display of wealth.
Money started coming his ways from all corners and he wasted no time to display his new status. Social media gossips started to develop some theories which tried to investigate where his money came from. Some claimed he was into kidnapping, others said he was a ritualist while some claimed he was a drug baron. All these theories failed on June 10 when the Dubai police went in search of him and 11 other Nigerians in an operation tagged Fox Hunt 2. According to the police, Hushpuppi and his friends constituted a cybercrime syndicate, specialized in hacking corporate emails, cloning of websites of corporate bodies and directing payments and money transfers from these websites to their own accounts.
In order to achieve and perfect these criminal activities, Hushpuppi and his boys used tools like 15 flash drives, 119,500 files, 47 smart phones, 6 hard drives and 21 laptops. Hushpuppi made a fortune of about 168 billion Naira after defrauding over1.9 million persons and corporate bodies over the years. He had a fleet of highly expensive 13 luxury cars worth about $7 million and was known as Gucci Master because of his love for Gucci wears.
Hushpuppi always displayed wealth and an international high profile status. He commanded attention anywhere he want. He would hire a private jet, pick first class in an aircraft and always used one of his Rolls Royce Phantom cars to drop him at the airport anytime he was travelling. Social media gossips also had it that at several occasions, Hushpuppi shut down some clubs and ordered the clubs there never to serve any other customer until he and his friends were done. All these things were done in the United Arab Republic city of Dubai.
For four months, the police and Interpol kept tracking and monitoring the criminal moves of Hushpuppi and those of his close colleagues. A couple of weeks ago brought the whole flamboyancy, razzmatazz the tendency to make more millions to an end.
Hushpuppi and his friends met their waterloo as the Dubai police got hold of him and others.
By this historic arrest, the whole “fame”, popularity, followership and wealth of Hushpuppi have died a natural death. A popular Nigerian newspaper described him as a former billionaire. The reason for this is certainly connected to the fact that the police in Dubai had confiscated almost all that made Hushpuppi, foolishly show his flamboyant lifestyle with reckless abandon, including the $40 million cash that was said to have been recovered from him cash by the police. Some guys have described him as a “money-miss-road” while others had displayed no pity for his showmanship which they have tagged as foolish.
Hushpuppi, a man who made about $450 million with over 2.4 million followers on Instagram is now the talk in and outside Nigeria. Some speculations Umuaka Times gathered had it that, moves are being initiated to deport him to Nigeria for trial.
