Scamfluencers - The Billionaire Gucci Master | Part One

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

On Instagram, Hushpuppi flaunts an extravagant international lifestyle. He wears head-to-toe Fendi and poses next to Bentleys and private jets. His millions of followers know him as the former “Yahoo boy” — a Nigerian email scammer — who transcended poverty and now calls himself the Billionaire Gucci Master. But his haters, including more than a few rappers, all want to know: Where is his money coming from? Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to scam influencers add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Satchie, I have a question for you and I'm scared to hear the answer. Oh boy. Have you ever been hacked? No, I've never been hacked. I'm very careful about my online security. And I would say to anybody listening to this, don't try. Don't try it. Also, you're not even gonna like what you see.

It's dark in here. Do you know how, like, in the movies, they make it seem like you have to be this extreme coder, super computer genius, and that's how you hack? Yeah, like Sandra Bullock and the Net. She's like, I'm in. Yes, or Angelina Jolie and hackers. Well, that's actually not true.

And the scam we're gonna talk about proves that all of these movies are kind of wrong. So I'm gonna tell you a story about a guy who took a very basic email scam and wrote it to fame, fortune, and infamy. Okay, Satchie, want to start by showing you a video of this jet set influencer getting arrested. His name is Ramona Boss, aka Hushpapi, and the arrest takes place in June of 2020 in this luxury penthouse in Dubai where he lives. And lucky for us, the Dubai police produced a whole video about it

and hired some British guy to narrate it. It's one of the most insane official government videos I think I've ever seen. And the police actually spent weeks making this fancy video after the arrest. They really wanted the world to know about their successful operation. The Nigerian Instagram celebrity

who was arrested on multiple fraud charges for crimes committed in different parts of the world boasted about his wealth and expensive possessions on social media claiming he is a successful businessman. Alright, this is a really strange video. There's like cops in full-swat combat gear. They're bursting into this really expensive looking apartment. It's a montage of this hush Puppy guy's Instagrams, him with money on private planes, really fancy cars,

expensive outfits. God, this looks like a Michael Bay movie. What am I watching? It looks like the beginning of those music videos from the late 90s, early 2000s. This is when P Diddy was like, all my music videos are gonna last eight minutes. And Hush Puppy's arrest is actually part of a massive global operation. And the police

are able to find Hush Puppy only because he lives a double life as a cyber criminal and a celebrity influencer. He comes from nothing, makes it to the top of the world, and ultimately will be brought down because he just can't stop posting luxury thirst traps. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of One Reast Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the story of OxyContin, a popular painkiller that helps spur an epidemic of addiction and drug abuse, in which prompted a broad campaign to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable. Listen to American scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Many involved in crypto saw Sandbankman Freed as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs, but in just one month, his crypto exchange would collapse. From Bloomberg and Wonder Recomes, Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the wild rise and fall of FTX and its founder Sam Bankman Freed. Listen to Spellcaster on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondry, I'm Sarah Haggoye, and I'm Sachi Cole. And this is Scample Inswers. I'm gonna have to move my lesson to my speaker too, I'll have to not feel like I'm watching. Sachi, this story is nuts.

It's about a guy who is living a double life and he was crazy successful at both of them. To all the world, he was a very sincere Instagram influencer posting about fashion and style with millions of followers. And by night, he was part of some of the most sophisticated cyber scams of the century. And it took like several governments working together to bring him down. This is episode one of our two-part series,

The Billionaire Gucci Master. Back in the early 2000s, Ramona's a teenager growing up in Lagos, Nigeria. And though he's just a kid, he's already kind of a businessman. He scours their stores and Lagos suburbs for brand name clothes and then takes them to fans here neighborhoods and sells them to tourists at a markup. Ramon's from a working class family that's barely scraping by. And when I say scraping by, I mean they are truly struggling. One of Ramones sisters actually dies of typhoid because his family couldn't pay her medical bill. That's actually really sad.

Ramones got a knack for the resale business and he loves clothes but it isn't really enough money to live on so he has a side hustle at the cyber cafe at the end of the street. Sachee, what do you remember about cyber cafes? I feel like they were a bit before our time. I do remember using them with some frequency in India. Yeah, and they are huge in Nigeria in the early 2000s. So Ramon's usual cyber cafe is like a cramped storefront with walls lined with tables and boxy old computers.

And inside, young guys are bent over the keyboards typing furiously. Ramon's best friend, Pock, waves him over to an empty spot. And Ramon uses his hard earned thrifting money to pay the owner for an hour of internet access. Then he logs on to a new website that just arrived in Nigeria, Yahoo! Yeah, I do remember getting a lot of news from Yahoo and spending maybe too much time in Yahoo chat

rooms. Oh yeah, I did a lot of that. Well, Ramones known as a Yahoo boy. So it's a slang term for young Nigerians using cybercafes and free email addresses to run scams. And we don't know exactly what scams Ramone was running then, but he may have started with one of the most popular and easy cons. They're called confident scams. That's where a scammer talks to someone in chat rooms over email or whatever and strikes up a friendship. Maybe they even pretend to fall in love with them, and then once he's earned their trust, he'll ask for money. Okay, sounds a little like catfishing, but all right.

Yeah, I mean, it was catfishing before the term even existed, and it's mind-blowing how much money these scams can bring in compared to other jobs in Nigeria. So a ton of young guys are getting in the game, including Ramon, and he is really, really good at it. In fact, Ramon's about to graduate from basic confidence scams to something a little more technical and a lot more lucrative.

Fast forward about a decade to 2013. Ramon's sitting with Pach and their friends, not in a cybercafe, but on the patio of a swank restaurant in Lagos. Their days of buying internet by the hour are over. Now they have smartphones and laptops. The last 10 years have been good to Ramone. He has a real disposable income now, so he's buying swag like Versace high tops and Louis Vuitton man bags and he's starting to go by a new nickname, Hush Puppy. His new email is Ray Hush Puppy at iCloud. You don't know where Hush Puppy came from, but I personally find it very cute.

It is cute. And as the technology has advanced, so-remoned scams. He's moved on from pretending to be a boyfriend, to pretending to be a business, to scam other businesses. It's called a BEC scam that stands for business email compromise. Ramon pretends he's an employee of a legit business, like a bank,

then he sends an email asking someone to make an account transaction with him. All right, well, this sounds like a pretty classic email scam. Like, I feel like my spam inbox is full of requests like this. Yeah, and scamming businesses instead of people means Ramones making bank. That night on the restaurant patio, he's splashing out. Fones are out, and everyone's taking pictures.

Ramone poses. He might post something later to this new app. Have you ever heard of it, Sachi? It's taking pictures. Ramon poses. He might pose something later to this new app. Have you ever heard of it, Sachi? It's called Instagram? Mm, yes, I'm very popular there right now. But at the time, it was like a new app, right? Yeah, and as these guys are busy enjoying their time snapping photos, a few police officers walk by on the street

and they hide their phones fast. There's actually a special police task force cracking down on the Yahoo boys. The task force is called SARS, special anti-robbery squad, and their tactics are brutal. They point guns at young men just walking down the street. Anyone in Nigeria who carries a cell phone or a laptop is at risk of getting arrested, or worse. SARS is really notorious for harassing, extorting, assaulting, and even killing people, basically at random.

Jesus, so all you need to get in trouble is just to be like a young man standing around with a phone. Yeah, and Ramone's tired of constantly watching his back. He hates that he can't just openly flaunt his wealth. So in early 2014, Ramon makes a tough choice. He decides to move somewhere where he can continue scamming without having to be afraid for his life. Ramon's heard Malaysia is a safe haven for grifting. It's easy to get student visas and there's better internet than Nigeria. And the police don't really have the

resources to go after them. Ramon's about to step into a whole new life in Malaysia, one where the scamming opportunities are boundless, and he'll make a new persona to match. In Ramones' first year in Malaysia, he transforms into an influencer. He starts posting on Instagram as Hush Puppy, Sachi, he is honestly so good at it. He's a good looking guy with close cropped hair, a neat beard and the playful half smile, and he isn't just some slob-wearing expensive shit. He has actual style. He's an early adopter of the designer Virgil Abloh, five years before Abloh got hired

by Louis Vuitton. He's rocking threads from all the big-yellow fashion houses, Prada, Gucci, Versace, and there's a lot of Versace. So much of it that in January 2015, Hush Puppy posted video from the Versace store in Cuála Lumpur. He's sitting at a gold table and opening a gift at the store gave him for being one of their top customers. $2,000. Okay, do it. I just think it's about $1,000.

Mmm. I'm not going to lose. Okay. A key from the slashing. Oh, wow. That is a new ashelon of wealth. To be so rich that people just start giving you free things. Yeah, and he gives himself an incredible new nickname

on Instagram, the billionaire Gucci master. His captions are all about hustle culture, though he never specifies exactly what his hustle is, but it's clear that whatever Hush Puppy's doing, he's getting paid. I love when people talk about the hustle. Those are people who are not working. I feel like we all kind of follow those people on Instagram

and they're always doing really expensive shit but you don't really know what their job is but you just kind of assume that they just have money somehow. Yes, it's very lady-doth protest too much. And as Hushpuppie's follower account blows up, people start arguing on gossip blogs about where he gets his money. By this point, he's a scammer anthem. That's the BJ, they need more fuck, they need. Junior wife, they need. The song is kind of a scammer anthem.

It shouts out a ton of Yahoo boys making them into folk heroes. And Nigeria's National Broadcasting Commission actually bans the song, saying it promotes fraud. Then, Tumaya, an Nigerian singer with more than 700,000 YouTube subscribers releases Telly Person. It's a song about people who live lavishly and wear Gucci,

but who blow all their money on designer fits instead of investing. And if it's not clear that they're basically sub-tweeting Hash Puppy with the lyrics, they make it a lot more obvious in their music video. Sachi, you have to take a look. Well, first of all, this song is a banger. No skips, all slabs. And in the video, there appears to be a very sweet little fluffy doggo with a like a bit dazzled necklace that says Gucci dog. It's clear that this is supposed to be Hush Puppy. I guess this song is just one big burn, but again, it's a banger. Well, that song has more than 14

million views. Telly Person also named Jack's Momva, another Nigerian influencer, Hashpapi became close with. In 2017, three years after Hashpapi moved to Malaysia, Momva actually convinces him to join him in Dubai. Momva says he can raise his game there. And that's when Hashpapi moves into the Palazzo Versace, where rent is $10,000 a month. Hmm, normal.

Penthouse, rooftop, Palazzo Versace. By this point, he's got hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and designers invite him to travel to fashion shows and drink champagne at VIP events. But he's still not satisfied. Being mentioned in songs is cool and all, but Hush Puppy's not interested in background fame,

he wants to become notorious. Hush Puppy knows Corden controversy is one of the best ways to get more followers. So, not long after moving to Dubai, he decides to go on the offensive. Again, some of the biggest musicians in Africa. Starting with Davido, the Nigerian rapper and a music producer and self-proclaimed, coolest kid in Africa.

And Davido might be right. He's one of the biggest stars of Afrobeats, a genre that dominates Africa. Davido has 24 million Instagram followers, two million followers on Snapchat. He's the most followed African musician on Twitter, and his YouTube channel has more than a billion views. In the spring of 2017, Hush Puppy hears a rumor that DeVito couldn't pay his bar tab at a swanky nightclub in Lagos. So, Hush Puppy decides to troll him.

He goes to the club and parties hard. Then, he posts his own bar tab on Snapchat to let his followers and DeVito know that he dropped $27,000 at the club in one night. I am always curious when stories like that come up when someone's like, I spent $50,000 on bottle service and I'm like, how? Well, DeVido takes the bait. He posts a very impressive bank statement on Snapchat showing that he could totally cover a bar tab.

In the influencer game, everyone wins. Davido gets to prove he could cover more than a bar tab, and Hush Puppy gets the attention of Davido's millions of international followers. And Hush Puppy's not done feuding. A few months later, he goes after Fino, another superstar Nigerian rapper, with over 7.5 million followers on Instagram, and nearly half a million YouTube subscribers. Hush Puppy accuses Fino of wearing fake patek-fulie watches. Sachi, do you want to read Fino's response?

Yes, I absolutely do. He says, we not on the same level, mate. You live and die for Gucci. I live and die for my people. The hunger is different here, man. All right, I kinda dig that. It's classy. It's a classy response.

That is a classy response. To something very stupid. But why does Hush Puppy want all of this attention? Like he's still scamming, right? So why would he be like, come look at me. Okay, yes, he is still scamming. And the more he trolls Nigerian celebrities, the more his haters fire back with burns at our honestly, a little too accurate. Satji, will you read this post from Casey, who is another Nigerian singer or songwriter? Yeah, I can.

He says, you have no credibility, no known source of income, and yet you come on social media to attack hardworking Nigerian musicians with traceable wealth. What do you do for a living? What is your talent? How do you make your money? What brand do you represent? That's so mean.

Like if somebody said this three, I would simply die. But then he says, we need to start asking questions and the EFCC needs to start paying more attention to detail. So the EFCC is Nigeria's agency that investigates financial crimes. So having someone tag them in a post about you if you're an international scammer is truly not ideal. Yeah, it seems like a bad plan. It's like when people like tag the FBI. Okay, well, here's the thing.

Hashpapy talks a big game about his haters, but I think some of this beef really sticks with him, especially Fino's comment about caring more about Gucci than his people. A few months later, he responds, on its face, it's kind of tone deaf. A photo of him chilling in a hot tub on the Greek island of Santorini.

But there's a two-part caption titled Letter to the Getto Kid. And honestly, it's kind of deep. You have to take a look. Okay, well, I just gotta say already, this is not starting great. First of all, this is way too many words. The other thing about this, well, I just got to say already this is not starting great. First of all, this is way too many words. The other thing about this, Sarah, is that he posted two separate photos with different captions,

you know, sort of creating one incredibly long life story essay. He says, I represent every underprivileged kid of the world and especially of Nigeria and Lagos and encourages those who are hustling hood kids to let no man hold you down. I don't know, I mean honestly, this is like very like hustle culture. He's like saying the right words, but they're just empty and he's standing around in like a Gucci tracksuit. Yeah, it's coming from a real place, but he's a scammer.

And he's like, they don't care about you and they don't expect anything from you, but he's also made his fortune ripping people off. Ha ha ha. The post does hit a nerve. Messages of support pour in from his fans, and obviously, Hushpuppies a world away from the kid hawking secondhand clothes.

But his lavish displays of wealth aren't just raising questions with the haters. They're also setting alarm bells off with the FBI. And pretty soon, the feds realized all the evidence they need to nab him is right there on his Instagram. Okay, fast forward a year and a half to February 2019. On the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, a woman named Abigail Mamo is headed to work. Abigail's a CEO of a small business interest group, and she stands out in stuffy business meetings with her red hair, big blue eyes, and boss bitch vibes. Her office is a few blocks from the waterfront of Grand Harbor.

Malta is perfectly picturesque, but this morning, Abigail sees right away that something's wrong. She's flooded with calls from small businesses all over Malta. They're all having the same problem. Their point of sale machines aren't working. Here she is talking about that day to the BBC. The first four hours when it started, it was complete chaos.

The machines that aren't working are the ones that go through the Bank of Aleta. But that's a huge problem, because the Bank of Aleta is one of the oldest and biggest banks in the Republic of Malta. Almost half of the country's financial transactions go through that one bank. Here's Abigail on the BBC again. Malta is very, very dependent on the bank. It has so many clients. Everyone has accounts there. So it was all very confusing.

And soon, it gets worse. ATMs all over the island are malfunctioning too. Bank of Valeta ATMs. The Bank's app isn't working either, and when Abigail checks, it looks like the entire Bank of Valeta website has been taken down. The mood flips from confusion to chaos in Malta.

Shop owners, unable to run customer credit cards or reach the bank by phone, just start turning people away. Abigail starts hearing that people are abandoning their grocery carts in line because they can't pay for their food. Abigail is freaking out. She and her colleagues are scrambling to figure out what the hell is going on, But no one can reach the bank, because at that very moment, a cybercrime machine is

draining millions of euros from the bank of Oletta. And a certain Nigerian influencer is at the center of it all. More than 3,000 miles away in Dubai, Hush Puppy is watching deposits roll into bank accounts he set up all over the world, a grand total of about 13 million euros. And all that cash is coming from, you guessed it, Maltes Bank of Aleta. Hold on, I mean, I know we talked earlier about how like a lot of these scams are kind of simple, but this sounds really elaborate. So how did he pull all of this off?

That is an excellent question. In the year and a half, since Hushpuffy wrote about his humble beginnings from a hot tub in Santorini, he's continued scamming and living large in Dubai. But he's also hooked up with a powerful new crew of cyber criminals. The head of this operation is a Canadian grifter named Gleb Alamari. He's in his 30s with prominent ears and a neckbeard and his nickname is Big Boss. And he is a Big Boss. Gleb runs an international crime syndicate which now includes Hashpapi. But ultimately, Gleb is a cog in a way bigger scheme, cooked up by a group of North Korean

hackers. Okay, I am loving the Canadian representation in this truly international tale. I know, it always comes back to us. And these North Korean hackers are some of the most prolific cyber criminals in the world. They're the ones who broke into Sony. Do you remember that, Satchi? Oh, God, it was so embarrassing. They released all of these internal emails from other executives and it led to a lot of

drama because they sold these execs insulting their own talent and their own movies. And Hashpapi's boss, Galeb, has worked on other bank heists with North Koreans. But this time, they're doing things a little differently. Sachi, you have to pay attention here, because the multi-heist is a bit complicated. Here's how it works. First, the North Korean hackers email the bank. They pose as European regulators and ask for access to the bank's payment systems. You know, just to check them out, kind of like routine maintenance.

Then, bam, they're in. Once inside the bank system, the hackers transfer money to international bank accounts set up by people like Hush Puppy. In this heist, Hush Puppy and the people he works with have to set up accounts ready to accept five million euros each. They're spreading out the stolen money

to avoid raising alarm bells. Okay, so it sounds sort of like personal tax shelters almost, they're just trying to like move money around enough so that nobody really sees it. Yeah, it's like technically small amounts of money kind of thing, comparatively to how much money a bank has, right? So the night of February 12, 2019, the North Koreans withdraw huge amounts of money

from the bank of Aleta, and no one notices. It goes so well that Gleb tells Hush Puppy that they're gonna keep pumping. The next day, they take out more money, but this time, people do notice, and within 30 minutes, the bank shuts everything down. That afternoon, Hush Puppy gets a text from Galeb. Galeb says the game is up, the bank pressed recall

on most of the stolen funds. He sends a link to a local news story about the heist, and Hush Puppy just writes back, damn. Ha ha ha ha ha. That really reminds me of that meme. I don't know if you've seen it where somebody sends this guy like a whole chunk of text and he replies back, like, sorry if that happened to you or congratulations,

I'm not reading all that. Yeah, honestly, it's kind of like how I text my friends and they get really mad at me. You do text like that, I hate it. So even though the bank got wise, the hacking team still walked away with three million euros. Hashpuppi celebrates by buying himself a new Bentley. He poses with it wearing head-to-toe fendee.

Unbelievable. And with this heist, Hashpuppi officially joins the scammer Big Leagues. And his North Korean friends have already zeroed in on their next target. A few months later in June 2019, Hashpapi arrives at the Dubai Airport, the exclusive part of the airport for people flying privately.

The ultra-modern lounge has bright orange chairs and a matching orange pool table. It's completely empty. Hashpapi, whoops out his phone and starts posting to stories. This life is too good to believe. I'm coming in private jets. Paris stand up. A real one is coming through. Don't play. Hashpapi is friendly with Virgil Abloh, who by now is artistic director

Louis Vuitton, and the fashion house is flying him to Paris for Fashion Week. They're putting him up at a luxury hotel down the street from the arc to triomphe and setting him up with lunch at the Louvre. And of course, he's got amazing seats for the Louis Vuitton men's wear fashion show. The show is being held on the street of the Yields-Lessitay right behind the Notre Dame. Hoshpupi sits right in front of the orchestra that's playing while models walk along cobblestone streets. Some of the models are actually rappers, musicians,

professional skateboarders, and even an arsenal football player. Hush Puppy is now undeniably cool. He's at the center of not only fashion but culture. When he's not front row at an international fashion event, he's partying in Dubai an international fashion event, he's partying in Dubai with international superstar WizKid, or he's washing his legs with champagne at a pool party with Nigerian rapper Mr. P, or he's going to a Nigerian politician's birthday

party, or he's attending Davido's brother's wedding and making it rain on the groom with $100 bills. I don't know how else to say it, Sachi. Hush Puppy is a big freaking deal. I mean, clearly. Like, he is a popular guy, and he's clearly well-liked in some sense. I mean, I think if you're gonna be that rich, you should be popular. Yes, I mean, he is doing one thing right. And back at the Louis Vuitton show,

Hush Puppy is waiting for the show to start. When he gets a message from Galeb, they're texting about their new scam. This time, they're targeting an English Premier League team. I know you don't care about sports, but you have to realize this is a crazy big deal, Sachi. I mean, I don't care about sports, but I do understand that this is a big deal. It's a huge deal because this is the only sport that everyone in the world watches.

And Galapagol's Hush Puppy that they might net 100 million pounds. It's the same tried and true scam hackers sent emails to the team claiming to be legit authorities, then they get access to their bank funds and funnel that money to Hush Puppy's receiving accounts. Their scams are ambitious, but they're also getting sloppy. After the Louis Vuitton show, Hush Puppy waits to hear if he's going to get Premier League riches. Then, Gleb Texan saying there's a problem. He can't send money from the UK to Hush Puppies accounts in Mexico. He says they keep finding out.

The football heist is another bust. So Hush Puppie and Gleb decide to take a different approach with this next scam, which happens to be their most audacious one of all. By this point, four months after his trip to Paris, the highlights of Hashpupi's fabulous life all appear online, being hand-fed by Salt Bay, hanging with famous footballers and rappers, and of course, going big each year on his birthday. For 36th birthday in October 2019, Hashpuffy spends the afternoon celebrating in the Burberry VIP lounge.

He's surrounded by friends and Nigerian preacher and radio personality, Daddy Freeze. Hi guys, and Daddy Freeze got Vinah of the free, the sheep movement and leader of the free nation in Christ. Daddy Freeze is in his 40s and he's got a popular YouTube channel. So Freeze holds his iPhone up recording everything. So it's Hush Puppy's birthday, where the barberry VIP lounge is celebrating Happy Christmas.

So chilling with Daddy Freeze reminds Hush Puppy of home. So he invites him to come over a few days later and tour the Palazzo Versace. Hush Puppie welcomes him with a glass of champagne. All right, champagne in Versace glasses. Click, click. Cheers.

It's a good life. Hush Puppie shows off his lavish penthouse, his sneaker collection, the rooftop pool. He's playing the generous host, and Daddy Freeze is eating it up. But there's one door that stays shut. The door to the room packed with laptops and burner phones. Headquarters for Hush Puppy's cyber operations. There's just something really funny about the words.

The headquarters for Hush Puppy cyber operations. I know, it sounds like a Nickelodeon junior show. Yeah, like this sounds like a teen spy show. Like, what jam is Hush Puppy gonna get into next, Agi? Well, the whole time they're touring the place, Hush Puppy keeps checking his phone. He's waiting for a text from Golebb because their most recent heist went down today.

For this one, they're swindling $1 million from a New York law firm. Hushpuppie wants confirmation from Galeb that the money was deposited in his account. So far, it's radio silence. So Hushpuppie sends a text. Sup, bro. Money came in. He sits down for a dinner with with Daddy for reason a few others. Then, Hush Puppy's phone buzzes with a new message.

It's from Gleb. Hush Puppy excuses himself and goes into the room with all the laptops to read the message. Gleb says the money went through. There are a million dollars richer. But Hush Puppy wants to receive. He asks to see a screenshot of the account. There are a million dollars richer, but Hush Puppy wants to receive. He asks to see a screenshot of the account, and Gleb says his flight just landed in Atlanta, his Wi-Fi signal isn't strong enough to send a screenshot yet, but he will ASAP.

Hush Puppy waits for the screenshot, and he waits, and waits, and waits. Finally, he pockets his phone and goes back to dinner. He has guests, and he doesn't want to be rude. What Hush Puppy doesn't know is that Gleb isn't just suffering from bad Wi-Fi. When he got off the plane, he walked right into the arms of the FBI. They've arrested him on charges of wire and bank fraud. Oh my god, is he gonna flip? I feel like he's gonna flip. Well, Hush Puppy takes daddy frees down to the parking garage to show off a bright red Ferrari.

Freeze revs the engine, grinning like a little kid. Hush Puppy tries to enjoy the moment, but being ghosted by Gleb has him feeling kind of nervous. And he should be, because when the FBI took a lab into custody, they confiscated his phone and laptop too. It's a treasure trove of data from one of the most notorious cybercrux in the world, and it's gonna lead the police right to Hush Puppies doorstep. The day after Gleb Ghostim, Hashpupy hears that his friend and fellow influencer, Momfa, was arrested in Nigeria, charged with fraud and money laundering.

Hashpupy's a little shaken up, so a few days later, he posts an unusually compassionate caption. Sachi, could you please read part of it for us? I can. It says, in life, we all at a point will go through trial times. Don't be quick to mock anyone or use anyone's trial time as tool to chase cloud. Yours will come and you might not survive it. Oof.

The other sign that Hush Puppy is getting worried? He logs on to Instagram and hits the edit profile button. He deletes his bio, retrieves the billionaire Gucci master, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, and changes it to something much more generic, real estate developer. He might be looking over his shoulder, but it doesn't mean he's going to stop scamming. This lavish lifestyle requires a constant stream of new money. With his most reliable hook-up

for work, Gleb, missing an action, Hush puppies got to find a new crew, jobs that will keep the good times rolling, and the police, bar, bar away. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, FBI Special Agent Andrew John in Ascente is sitting down at his desk at the Bureau's Field Office. It's a towering building in LA's Westwood neighborhood, not far from UCLA. That's where Agent In Ascente's team is based. He's been working at the FBI for the last four years, most of it spent trying to track down North Korean hackers. And now, he's analyzing evidence from a recent arrest made in a totally separate investigation that started a few years back in Florida.

There was a group of bank fraudsters there who were preparing to impersonate a doctor so they could drain his bank account. But the person the fraudsters asked to impersonate the doctor was actually a police informant. So he obviously told the cops who was running the operation and it turns out that big boss was a guy living in Mississauga, Ontario. His name, Gleb. Oh.

And police soon realized Gleleb was a major fraudster. So, Agent Innocente's FBI unit was brought in, and they connected the dots all the way to the North Koreans. Okay, so some small time crook in Florida brought them to the North Korean hackers. That is what you were telling me. It's so random, but yes.

So now, in December 2019, Agent Innocenti is searching through Gleb's laptop and phone. He wants to figure out who else Gleb was working with, like this guy in his phone saved as Hush. Agent Innocenti notices Gleb has a Snapchat contact saved as billionaire Gucci master. That Snapchat account leads Agent Innocenti

to HushPuppey's Instagram page, and I can't even imagine what goes through his mind when he sees that one of the suspects in this massive international cybercrime ring is a dude with more than 500 public posts, and every post is full of expensive luxury goods, like the kind of material shit that money launders love. I mean, that must feel like a real jackpot. In Ascente scrolls through Hoshpuppi's Instagram, shaking his head, he still has to prove that this guy is part of Gillette's criminal syndicate,

and he's gonna follow this lead wherever it takes him. And what Hoshpuppi doesn't know yet is that the FBI is building their case against him by analyzing every like, every comment, and every hashtag. As Agent Innocenti is getting familiar with the billionaire Gucci master, Hashpappi is an Abu Dhabi for the F1 Grand Prix race. The racing track is massive, built next to a marina where wealthy fans can park their gigantic yachts. While he's there, Hashpapi celebrates reaching a big milestone, two million followers. He takes a moment to reflect and to figure out his next move. An old friend,

Kenyan entrepreneur, Abdurrahman Jama has reached out and he wants Hashpapi to join him in an old school confidence scam. Like the web scams he pulled off in his early days as a Yahoo boy. With Gleb MIA, Hush Puppy decides he can't be choosy, and he says yes. A good old classic scam. Aww. That sounds almost wholesome, you know, going back to your roots. Well, the scam is pretty bold. The victim is a business person who wants to build a school in Qatar, but the guy needs a big loan to do it.

$15 million. They ask their money manager how to get that kind of money, and the money manager says, just Google it. Okay. Great advice. Seems like a really bad money manager. Yeah, so the business person literally Googles how to borrow $15 million.

And, unlike Ali for him, he lands on a website for Jama's fake firm. Jama's hooked them, and now he needs Hashpapi to come in and seal the deal. So Hashpapi poses as Malik, a banker working with Jama's firm. He messages the business person and says that if they want the loan, they need to pay something up front.

And somehow, the plan works. Their mark wires $100,000 to a capital-1 account, and another $230,000 to a Florida Wells Fargo account, which belongs to a luxury watch seller. A few days later, early in January 2020, a package arrives at the Palazzo Versace. It's a rose gold and titanium Richard Meal watch. One Hush Puppy has wanted for ages. And now he has it, courtesy of the defrauded business person.

Hush Puppy wastes no time posing with the watch on Instagram. What do you think, Satchie? He's posing with the watch as if he has do you think, Sachi? I mean, he's posing with the watch as if he has like a snake on his hand. Like he seems to almost be divorced from his limb. Yeah, Hush Puppy never looks that comfortable in his own skin. No, it seems like he's uncomfortable with his own wealth,

but I mean, I guess it's a nice watch. Well, here's the thing, it's not just about the watch. By depositing funds into this watch sellers account, the business person helped Hush Puppy and Jama wash the money so it can't be traced back to them. That is, unless someone in law enforcement is watching Hush Puppy's Instagram. Ooh, okay. The mark doesn't seem to suspect anything wrong. So Jama and Hush Puppy decide to keep milking them for more and more and more. But all's not well in paradise.

One of Jama and Hush Puppy's business associates, Vincent Kelly Chabuzo is fed up. He made the fake website and fake documents that convinced the mark this is all legit. But he doesn't think he's being paid enough. He's been complaining to Jama and Hashpapi for weeks, but they haven't done anything. He even threatened to go to the authorities, but Hashpapi called us bluff. Finally, he's had enough. He decides to take matters into his own hands. Vincent picks up the phone and dials the

Mark's number. His heart is pounding. And when they pick up, Vincent takes a deep breath and tells them that Hashpapi and Jama are the fraudsters. Okay, well, I mean, they are, right? Well, that's not all. He tells the Mark that if he ever wants to build that Katari school, that he should wire the money directly to him, that he's the one that can make it happen. But the business person isn't buying it. They turn around and tell Jama and Hush Puppy that Vincent is pulling a double cross.

And Hush Puppy loses his entire mind. Hush Puppy will stop at nothing to get revenge, even if it means losing everything. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to Scam Fluencers, add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen add free with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. This is episode one of our two-part series,

the billionaire Gucci Master. I'm Sarah Hagi, and I'm Sachi Cole. We use many sources in our research, a few that were particularly helpful were Evan Ratliffe's feature for Bloomberg and Jeff White's book The Lazarus Heist. Paola Mejia wrote this episode, additional writing by Satya Cole and Sarah Hagi. Jen Swan is our senior producer. Our producer is John Reed. Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and tape Busby. Sarah Ennie is our story editor.

Our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Additional research by Chisol M. Peter Job. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Free Sun Sink. Agent Tapia provided audio assistance. Our sound design is by J. Rothman. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelow, Stephanie Gens and Marshall Lui for Wundery. you