The Underworld Podcast - Bitcoin Blood Gangs and The Greatest Scammer of All Time

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Early one morning this past June, 6 fully kitted out SWAT teams in Dubai fanned out across multiple luxury buildings. They were targeting a vast criminal conspiracy that had scammed hundreds of millions of dollars through pretty simply cyber trickery. From Brooklyn Blood sets using cryptocurrency to facilitate their credit card scams to the Nigerian fraud king Hushpuppi getting busted with 40 million dollars in cash, we have some fun talking scammers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. It's an early June morning in Dubai. and six fully-kitted-out SWAT teams are on the move, with the halls of one of the city's most exclusive condos. I mean, you know, it's Dubai. It's fancy. But these cops aren't messing around, and they look like they're fully ready to engage

in a firefight full of automatic weapons. I mean, they look like they're about to take down a terrorist cell. United Arab Emirates and Dubai clearly want to send a little bit of a message. Dubai can kind of seem like a lawless place when it comes to international criminals, just setting up shop there. It's just kind of wild. I haven't spent that much time there. But it sounds like it's a combo of Beirut in the 80s and Casablanca in the 40s,

just all sorts of big money criminals based there, terrorist groups, mafiososos, white-collar criminals, spies. You know, to be a fly on the wall of a seven-star hotel bar in Dubai. In some of our episodes, we've actually talked about various mafiosos who have set up shop there to avoid extra legal situations like the Kinnahan cartel. But now in 2020, they've started cracking down on some of the more explicit criminals, including a Belgian Moroccan drug lord, accused of Kirst. killing 11 people. This operation, dubbed Foxhunt 2, is launched in coordination with American

law enforcement. The cops here don't end up facing any resistance, though. Their targets aren't known for their violence. Instead, these cops just barrel into these spotless luxury apartments and handcuff a bunch of really godly dressed Nigerian men, drip down in luxury brands and jewelry. When all is said and done, they'll end up arresting 12 people, finding 40 million in cash, 13 luxury cars, 21 computers, 47 smartphones, and apparently a list of 2 million victims on one of the phones or hard drives. And when the operation is finished, the Dubai police will release a four-minute video cut like it was directed by Ridley Scott.

I mean, you can go look it up online. We are talking people looking at multiple computer screens, Matrix-style graphics. You kind of half-expect one of the people to just start saying, enhance, enhance as it's playing. I can't even get a handle on what $40 million in cash looks like. Is that like a briefcase or is it like a pallet or what? Like, how'd you fit that in a house? They didn't show it, but I imagine it's kind of like that breaking bagged scene. Yeah, yeah.

The man at the center of this operation, the big target, is Raymond Abbas. But most people know the 38-year-old by his Instagram and Snapchat name, Hush Puppy. The complaint against him filed in court accuses Mr. Abbas of leading a transnational network of cybercriminals whose targets included a U.S. law firm, a foreign bank, at an English Premier League football club. You may not know him, but there's a decent chance. You may have actually got in an email from him. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast,

and today we are telling the story of the greatest scammer of all time. I am one of your host, Danny Gold. I'm here with Sean Williams. And, yeah, we've got a fun episode for you today. He's still in New Zealand. You know... One more day. One more day.

Yeah. The main character in episode 12 that we did, the most wealthiest narco in the world just got busted. So Sean's been talking about that all day to various news agencies. But, you know, I think it was about time we did a good old-fashioned scamming story. Yeah, and we'll get to, yeah, and we'll get to a bunch of the, like, you know, dummies shooting each other nightclubs next week again. I personally love a good scammer, especially if they're operating out of a, you know, seven-star hotel in Dubai. Yeah, too right. I actually lived there for a year and I could tell you some stuff about some pretty shady shit that goes on there.

Plus, like, every single episode we've done seems to have a connection there. Like the Indian one had a connection. The Nigerian mafia had a connection there. Like, everyone goes through that place. Maybe I'm going to do my own episode about Dubai in the future. I reckon it would be a good one. Yeah, and you've never actually told us what you were doing there. But, you know, I don't know if the statute.

And I never will. Statute limitations or anything like that is going on. Yeah, I should keep one. Yeah. In 2015, I actually started hearing this story about some scammers that I guess I would have fallen to a criminal phenomenon. And to this day, I'm upset. I actually never got to it because it's one of the more ingenious and fantastic crime stories I've ever chased. Now, it's not exactly about hush puppy, but it's the same sort of milieu, I guess you would say. So back then, scamming was, you know, all the rage, especially credit card scamming. I mean, it wasn't exactly like a new thing. I mean, it wasn't exactly like a new thing. right people have always scammed credit cards catch me if you can great movie we all love a good leo movie but it was becoming increasingly popular to the point where you know you started hearing soundcloud rappers making scamming anthems and it was really having a moment in like the hip-hop zeitguise if you will and there were these stories going around about these advanced methods about the use of

bitcoin just all this stuff yeah and i'm gonna post i go chop your money to social media right after we record this because that is it's like the daddy of all of the scammer songs i'm gonna get that one out I mean, some of the ones, like the pop-out boys had an anthem. Some of them were pretty good. But I started talking to some people, some of the young kids I know in my neighborhood that I knew who engaged in otherwise questionable activities, and everyone seemed to have a friend or two that was into this. And then I started talking to some cybersecurity experts, some law enforcement sources, and really started to piece things together. So by 2016, this was sort of on the radar, and you had some crews getting broken up and busted with laminating machines. and law enforcement was starting to catch on, but it was just really something. You had these young kids, these street crews, kids who were typically involved in drug dealing and gang stuff,

now engaged in this scamming that was outsmarting the credit card companies, and this is how it worked. So you know those stories who hear about, you know, credit cards being hacked at the gap or at Target? They're basically credit card transit points, right? All these numbers that get booked in cash registers, whatever it is, or websites. and every now and then you hear a story about them getting hacked, right? It barely makes the news anymore, but think how often you used to see Target credit cards hacked, eight million credit cards on file in the hands of hackers. I had an article loaded up today, or maybe it was from a while ago, I don't know,

but it was a Forbes article that was like this week in credit card news, and it was talking about how Sonic was hacked and Whole Foods was hacked. You know, it's nothing new. And these hackers, they're typically in like Russia or Moldova or Latvia, you know, somewhere in Eastern Europe or the former Soviet, States. Yeah, I just got like an email saying that my bonobos account was hacked. Like, when the fuck did I order anything from bonobos? But yeah, it's like every day, right? Right. This stuff happens all the time. So these hackers, they would typically put these credit

cards up for sale in bulk. But back in the day, you either had to speak like Russian or be deep in the hacking community to gain access to buying them. You know, they weren't easy to find unless you really knew where to look. This was dark web stuff or had to really cover your your communications and financial transactions. It was complicated. You had to be, you had to know your way around these things. But then something new came on the scene,

something that really exploded in 2013, 2014, and, you know, all that time. And that was cryptocurrency. Hey, we've got into crypto, finally. I felt like we've been avoiding it in some way, but it's only a matter of time, right?

Yeah, I mean, it just factors in so heavy to the story. Yeah. So, what did you mention of crypto, there wasn't this need to sell, these credit card numbers on the dark net, you know, to have to be super careful. So what do these hackers do? They made these wide open websites that were like eBay, like Amazon. Anyone could use them.

They might still be up. But I haven't, you know, I forgot the names. I haven't seen them in a while. These, they were just there. You know, you could just buy a thousand hack credit card numbers for like the equivalent of $50 in Bitcoin. You can even search for zip codes and buy credit cards from that specific zip code. I remember a cybersecurity expert telling me about this and I was just blown away. And then I went on the site and it was that easy to do this. So these young street crews in New York, like the kind that would usually be out low-level gangbanging or selling drugs to get by, they wised up to it. And they started using Bitcoin to buy thousands of credit cards, test them out, then use their own printing or laminating machines to make the cards.

Then they would send kids at a state to buy gift cards at places like Saks Fifth Avenue or Bloomingdale's to buy designer clothes. And, you know, some of them would wear designer clothes, someone but sell them or they would sell the gift cards or whatever else, and they were making tons of money. And, you know, why not, right? The risk for the kind of time you'll see for dealing, for violent crimes, for gun possession, when the money is much bigger, much easier and carries way less potential prison or potential for violence than doing this, like, why wouldn't you get involved in credit card scamming?

It's never the skate parks or the community centers these kids needed, right? It's just a Bitcoin wallet. I mean, look, there's a level of intelligence. I think when it comes to doing this kind of thing that is admirable. And I remember meeting one of these kids. I actually got hooked up by this dude Beef, who was like a super producer type, all sorts of connections and it made a lot of things happen when I was advised,

but never got the credit. So Beef, I'm giving you the credit. He knew I was looking to the story, but none of my sources were coming through. None of them wanted to talk. They were all little nervous. So he had this kid came by, and I met him. They called him the Jew, which you know as far as stereotypes ago,

I wasn't really a fan of. but I let it pass. So he came to meet me one day. And he's dressed pretty well. He's showing me a sell and he has like three different Bitcoin wallets on his phone. And this is 2000, maybe 15, maybe 16. I mean, this is early days, I think, for most people, not the kind of thing that, like, now where it's everywhere. That was around the time, I think it was like a thousand bucks of Bitcoin.

And they also had these Bitcoin ATMs going out, right? And if you looked at where they were on a map of New York City, they weren't going up in Chelsea or the Upper East Side and rich neighborhoods. They were located in bodegas in like East New York in Brownsville and East Harlem. These are much poor neighborhoods, unfortunately. You know, high crime areas, areas where these little sets and gangs operate out.

I had a detective tell me that some crews were like literally getting into beef over claiming Bitcoin ATMs as their territory. Like they were having shootouts over it. You know, sometimes I like to think that some of these kids held on to their Bitcoin. I think like I said, it was going for like $1,000 back then

and they just got like unfathomably rich. But who knows, I had a friend who was selling cratum back then, like a ton of cratum. He used to accept Bitcoin. This is like 2015, 26. And he was telling me, like, he really wished he held on to some of it. Like, what, like the drug? Like, what is that stuff? Cratum?

I mean, that's another episode for another day. But it's a gray area, semi-legal painkiller slash st. We're not going to get into that. That's a story for another day. Got some contacts in the world. I mean, in that world. I don't know what the Bitcoin is now, but like, didn't one of the first guys that bought pizza with it, like, loses password or $50 million in cash or something? I don't know. Like some crazy shit, like people just lose their password and about $10 billion or something.

There's some stories like that going around right now. I think it's around $30,000 or $40,000 right now. It's fluctuating. But, uh... Jeez. Yeah. It's good. Anyway, it was a legit thing, this sort of scamming that was really big, especially in Brooklyn. A different detective told me that he thought shootings were going down in the borough.

because these crews were getting so much money that they didn't have the need to be beefing over this stuff. And there was a Bloods crew adding Queens, the MacBallos who got busted. They had at least $200,000 worth of credit cards being scammed in 2017. I think one of them actually bought a Maserati

with some of the proceeds. And this is actually from a New York one story in December of 2016. Quote, investigators say, alleged gang members printed thousands of illegal credit cards using real and fake names. They bought the card numbers from hackers who sell stolen identification and financial data over encrypted websites, what's known as the dark web.

But the thing is that it's not even the dark web, right? I went on these sites. You could have just bought stuff right there. You just have to pay in Bitcoin. So they go on and talk about how members of other gangs, hood stars and other like big New York City crew, folk nation 823 Crips, which is, you know, Bobby Shmerda and that sort of pop smoke crew, they were. using the Bowies cards to rent expensive cars and buy everything from concert tickets to food. One of the defendants, a man named Tyrone Sexton, was apparently a big fan of the store American Girl, and he allegedly bought expensive dolls.

One of the detectives told on New York One. All right. But yeah, A2.3 is G-stone, man. They're like, they're a serious crew. Like, they're not, you know, they're not some, like, a bunch of little school kids running around. But I've actually heard stories of other rap groups getting their startup. funding not from drug deals like Jay-Z, but from credit card scamming. You know, it's just kids these days, man, with their internet and all that sort of stuff,

they can't even, can't even go out and earn the right way. There was actually the story of a Brooklyn rap group called the Pop-Up Boys. So I mentioned before, they did a song called for a scammer, and then they got busted for scamming, which I think we always tell you in every episode, don't Instagram your crimes, but don't, don't rap about your crimes either. Are you putting all these, like, tunes on the Patreon, right? Yeah, I'll put it up there. But you can just, I mean, you can YouTube that right now,

Pop Out Boys for a scammer. I mean, it's catchy. It didn't really do numbers, but. So here's a quote from a New York Times article about the Pop Out Boys. The group recruited friends to shop at Barneys and Sacks to buy luxury clothing and accessories. High-end shoes, ball main jeans, Celine and Goyard handbag.

I'm probably mispronouncing all this shit. Prosecutors said the group made 275 purchases at Barneys alone over 555 days, walking off with $258,000 worth of goods. Sacks lost 11,000 worth of merchandise in two months. The group used more than 2,000 still in credit card numbers from banks in France, Canada, Germany, and Dubai,

the police said. There we go. Dubai again, man. It just, you know, always popping up. And some Chicago rappers, I think the most well-known as G-Herbo, they just got busted on a big credit card for our charges like this year, accused of scamming to pay for designer puppies, private jets, trips to Miami,

and, you know, all the normal things. Authorities say that G-Hirbo and some others, They use text messages, social media messages and emails to share the account information taken from dark websites in order to bankroll a lavish lifestyle. So yeah, dark websites, they don't really get into how exactly they were doing it. But I think it kind of refers to like the same short scheme. Yeah, I mean, guys, if you do get hold of scam cards, don't buy a designer dogs. Just invest in real estate. Come on.

Yeah, real estate. I mean, liquor stores, laundromats. Like, that's really, come on. the game like like plan for your future i'm not saying you got to get mutual funds here but like do something anyway i never got to do that story because i parted ways with vice uh soon after due to um you know one of the new greasy scumbags in charge but a colleague who i told that i was working on that story stole it for me and did a half-ass version on it but you know that's that's how it goes i mean you know the listeners want to know more about this right like they can look at the

vice credit card story. I mean, like, it's out there. You know, have a look. Tell me if you think it's better than when I just talked about and could have, whatever. We'll, we'll keep going here. So we are here to talk about the greatest scammer of all time. Though to be honest, I think Adam Newman might actually hold that title, even though somehow he did it legally, Elizabeth Holmes had a nice run, you know, she got caught. And that Malaysian guy, how do you, how do you say his name? You did something on it, right? Joe, Joe Lau? Yeah, Joe Lau, I think. The one MVP guy. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. He might be in the running, but they are not our subjects. When we say we were talking about the greatest scammer in the world, we are talking about the billionaire Gucci master himself, Raymond Abbas, otherwise known as Hush Puppie, who email scammed his way to hundreds of millions of dollars in only a few short years. Our story begins in Dubai. I kind of already told you how it ends in Dubai,

but that is where Mr. Hush Puppie and his crew, that's where they were concentrating their work. That's where they were brought down. and I don't know, maybe the Dubai police just saw him as a soft target that wouldn't ruffle any feathers. But yeah, they promptly nabbed him, they shipped them off to the U.S. to stand trial for some scams he ran on people and companies based here, which, you know, you'll see as we get into Mr. Hushpupy, he broke some of the most cardinal rules of the underworld podcast, which is one, don't Instagram your crimes or your fancy lifestyle if you're earning that lifestyle off of crimes. don't send unencrypted text messages to your giant criminal organizations detailing all of your crimes and, you know, how they're working, and don't target people in the U.S.

because that will put you on the radar, and they will go after you and they won't stop until they bring you back here and you're sitting in a federal prison cell somewhere. That's 101. Yeah, that is like Underworld Podcasts 101. If you gain nothing else from this podcast, it's those three rules right there. If you're doing crimes, don't Instagram them or don't Instagram stuff that leads people to believe that you're earning your money illegally. Don't set unencrypted tax detailing the crimes that you're doing.

And like if you can stay out of fucking with the U.S., just don't do it because like the feds just have that reach, you know? I feel like we're stumbling towards merch where we've got don't Instagram with your crimes. That's, dude, that is. I mean, that is. That's a keeper. That's a key. Did you just come up with that literally right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, that's going on the list. Like, we will, I will sell t-shirts. That's say, don't Instagram your crimes. I feel like that could do, I mean, there's a couple of rappers I know that I need to send those to. Yeah. Anyway, we're going to keep it moving, but we're going to have those t-shirts out. I think that's, like, that's the merch move. Don't Instagram your crimes.

Yeah. And it's actually, it's really interesting how we did all this because it doesn't seem that hard. And he just kind of burst on the scene out of nowhere. We don't know a ton about, about the life of Hush Puppie. We know he grew up poor in a tough neighborhood in Lagos in Nigeria. His mother sold bread by the side of the road and his father was a cab driver. There's a Nigerian newspaper, I think it's a website actually maybe called the cable. And they went to his neighborhood and a woman running a food shop there, like a little stall,

said he often came to her little stall, little kiosk and he had to buy beans on credit. So the rags to riches story, it definitely applies here. And as he got older, he started washing cars for cash. A lot of reports have him as a secondhand clothes sales. man, though I did see one that said he made money selling secondhand designer clothes to the country's elite, specifically Lubiton. Is that how you say that? Lubiton.

Lubiton accessories. But he soon fell sway into like a rising industry in Nigeria at the time. Something that we've covered the origins of in the past, the 419 scams or the Yahoo boy stuff, I'm not going to dive into it too much here. But if you want a good primer on those scams, the famous Nigerian print stuff, the whole history of that and the crazy Nigerian cult gangs that run that racket, Sean went deep into it. I think it's episode four and he spent some time in Nigeria tracking it.

Sean, you can kind of go into it for a second here if you want. Yeah, these guys again. I mean, like folks can listen to the episode. We've got loads and loads of information in that. But these scams kind of prop up the entire Nigerian mafia, really. Like, they're the base level that all of them do. And now they do like way more sophisticated scams, like these company email scams and stuff like that. But yeah, just listen to the episode, join the Patreon, get the non-

Yeah, maybe we'll help you learn how to scam or not get scam. I don't either one. You know, it's all good. Probably learn not how to get scammed. Yeah, let's just say. Yeah, I don't know. Look, I'm a little loose right now. I'm actually in the cat scales. I got a couple glasses of Malbec I've been down in. So we're going to get, things might get saucy right now in the podcast. I'm fully behind it. Hush puppy himself. He started off doing the Yahoo boy scams, you know, the typical ones that we've talked about, the war vet lover, whatever it is. But apparently he learned about the bigger deal stuff after our trip to South Africa. He soon made his first big score. He even Instagram the gold Rolexes he bought with the money. And then he moves to Malaysia, where he continues running these scams. But it looks like he didn't really hit the big time until a few years later when he relocates to Dubai. And in Dubai, his star really rises.

From my Nigerian website, This Day Live, this is a quote, For many Nigerian socialites, politicians, and celebrities, Hush Puppie was the go-to guy to explore and enjoy optimally the Dubai nightlife. Whatever hushpupy went to the club, whether in Lagos or Dubai, or anywhere in the world, he made it rain with expensive champains and cognates, and he usually had for a company, some of the finest species of the women folk flown from all over the world. These are their words, not mine. I'm just saying it right now. Of a truth, he came to national consciousness when he blew $30,000 on drinks at the popular

Keylox nightclub owned by Sheena Peller, now a member of the House of Representatives. He became the toast of high society and top society ladies and celebrities therefrom. Was this article written by a scammer? No, it was written, I mean, it might be translated from like the Nigerian sort of pigeon English, but either way.

You get the idea, right? Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget. The Price Line app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle,

deals, game day deals, concert trips, deals. No one deals more deals than Price Line. Hold your horses. There's more. The app let you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beach fronts and wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting the up.

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. First Citizens Bank. For the power of spending lavishly in Instagram, where he soon had 2.5 million followers, this guy basically made himself into an international superstar celebrity.

And like, how is, speaking of that, like, how is Dan Bilsarian, like, not in jail right now? I mean, all his money is just stuff that is dad embezzled, right? Like, how, can we say that? Like, are there libel laws in the U.S.? I feel like they're pretty airtight? You might be screwed. I feel like I'm good. No, I'm delighted to call Dan Belsarian a massive scam artist.

slight trust for the cosplayer. I just, I don't get it, man. Like how? Why? But it's kind of like, like this guy too, right? He was bragging online about all his luxury lifestyles, just insane stuff. And then you just wondered how he didn't get caught. And then he did. Yeah.

So who knows? So Hush Puppie, he's just as global superstar at this point. He's piling around with high-level politicians, big-time musicians, you know, DeVito, Wizki, literally just calling himself the billionaire Gucci Master. His Instagram account is wild. All luxury vehicles, eating fancy foods in private jets, just like really gauche, heavily branded designer shit, posting stuff like,

started out my day having sushi done at Nobu and Monte Carlo, Monaco, then decided to book a helicopter to have facials at the Christian Diora spa in Paris, then ended my day having champagne and Gucci. It's all very like rise and grind, go and get it. If I did it, you can do it too. I'm not posting this to be a dick. I'm just posting it to inspire, like that, all that kind of nonsense. You're taking a shit on Silicon Valley in this episode,

and I'm fully, fully approving of it. It's not even Silicon Valley, man. I mean, those guys know better, I think. Well, some of them are all about, like, their yachts and stuff like that. But for the most part, I feel like people know better. I mean, there's guys who get their whole MO is doing stuff like this. But if you're doing it illegally, it's just not wise. So he also pissed off a lot of his fellow Nigerians because they saw him as someone

who gave the country a bad rap, just set a terrible example for young people, both because of the consumerism and just the general shadiness. Like, it's actually a real problem there. I've seen financial outlets talk about how the country's legitimate businesses suffer because of their reputation as being a place of scammers and hucksters. And he just kind of elevated that at a really big level. And for years. There's like an interesting thing about in Lagos where all of the buildings along the streets have signed saying, like, this building is not for sale because so many scam artists are like fake doing fake sales of buildings.

into the moment. It's like a big, big problem there. So yeah, like everyone fucking hates these guys. Yeah, I mean, I can see how they would ruin a rap for, for anyone. So it's, it's a, it's a giant country with plenty of legitimate businessman. It's just a shame that, like, this is what it gets known for, you know? Yeah. And for years, there were debates about how he made his money. He never really said anything about it. Some newspapers had columns about him, even some Nigerian rappers recorded songs, basically calling him out, talking about how he was a fraud and how shady he was. And every now and then he talked about how he made his money as a real estate investor, but I don't think anyone was really buying it. In 2017, he accidentally posted

an email address that had a credit alert. People traced it back to a woman in Houston, but the speculation just kind of died out after that. He kept quiet. And the dude just kept posting. And he kept getting more internationally famous for his Instagram, which like for the million time, you know, don't do that because people start asking questions. And then Fed start asking questions. and it's just the dumbest way imaginable to live and to get caught. Like the sheer audacity of people like this, it just shocks me. Gucci Lofer still feel good if you don't post them on IG. You're still driving a Maserati if there's no TikTok made about it.

You're 37 years old, man. Like you're not a teen. There's no excuse for this. Be smarter. I'm so mad. This applies to everyone, by the way. Guys, we don't give a shit what you had for brunch. We just care what podcasts you're paying for.

Okay. Actually, I do. I like seeing now. I mean, 10 years ago maybe, but now I like seeing the meals that people are eating. I'm just saying like, there's levels, right? If you're 40 years old, you shouldn't be making TikTok videos, pointing to different things.

If you're a criminal, you shouldn't be, I feel like I keep hopping on this because I'm just getting, getting deep into the wine. I'm getting angry. It's good. I had a good thing going, man. No, he actually got caught because of his Instagram and his Snapchat. I'm going to get to that, but that's how he actually got caught.

Anyway, so you look at the YouTube with this guy, there's so many videos of him and the luxury cars and the jet set lifestyle other people are making videos about his cars and it just, it raises flags

especially when you can't pinpoint where the money is coming from and I keep talking about this like I know rappers I've spent a lot of time in St. Louis we talked about that I know these kids they're posting up on IG

with a stacks of money and I'm like you run like two Airbnb's and you have 20,000 plays on Spotify nobody thinks you're getting that money legally like smarting up and you're not inspired anybody to get up and grind, except for the feds who are going to be like, oh, I'm going to bring

this guy down. He's got a lot more money than me. Or maybe like someone who's looking to rob you, but like it's not speculation. The social media stuff is how hush puppy got caught. And I want to get to that. But let's actually go into how he scammed and made what's estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars. Because I got to be honest, like it sounds easy, like really easy. But I guess he must have been like really good at it. Do I understand it? I don't really know. He mastered what's known as a BEC scam,

which is business email compromise. Basically it means he conned his way to get access to a business email account. Use it to poke around and then trick an employee from that company or a different one to wire money to an account that he controlled. You know, like sending you an email

that looks like it's from Facebook, saying you need to change your password, and you look at the actual email and it's from John, 489-9-5731 at RU.com. So he would do all that to people's work email addresses, get in there,

figure some stuff out, and wait until money was being discussed or flying around, and he gets in there with a bank account he controlled to some other business guy in email, I think, does that make sense? Like, I don't know, man. If I understood financial crimes, I'd be doing them.

Like, I wouldn't be podcasted. You know, you know what? I've got like a great report on this stuff. I know it's like dry, but I'm going to it on the Patreon and so people can like get into this because it's like it makes 12 billion dollars a year or something in the US it's like massive massive money so like it might be like it might be white collar and we like we like talking about gangsters who shoot guys and stuff but nah this is like this is big stuff I'm gonna I'm gonna stick that report off so everyone can kind of like get a load down yeah can you can you summarize it for the people yeah I mean a summary would be

pretending to be an official email address so that company people send you you cash. So yeah, that's pretty much it. But like... That actually is it. I have like two more pages explaining this. We cut them out, but I'm going anyway, you know, because I wrote this out and I want to want to keep it going. Here's a quote from US state attorney, Nick Hanna. BEC schemes are one of the most difficult cyber crimes we encounter as they typically involve a coordinated group of con con artists scattered around the world who have experienced with computer hacking and exploiting the international financial system. So they did this hundreds of times.

But one of the ones the U.S. law enforcement got him for was scamming $900,000 out of a law firm based in New York City by tricking a power legal into wiring money supposedly intended for one of their clients, like who's doing real estate financing, into a bank account that they control. And according to the Daily Beast, the power legal email the citizen's bank email addressed to verify instructions for the wire transfer, but it was a spoof email set up by Hush puppy. So about half the amount is instantly wired to a Canadian bank account and images of the wire transfer. transfer were shared between the group of Hush Poppy and his friends, they'd say, did it hit? And the guy's like, yeah, it hit. And this is over text message. So again, incriminating themselves. Shortly after setting the verification email, the paralegal will see the facts, which is part of the law firm's instructions with the wire details, which requested the funds be wired to a Chase Bank account instead. But the fake facts was sent by, you know, the hush dog himself. And following the policy,

the paralegal called the number of the facts to confirm the wire instructions, which goes to another number controlled by the scammers. And having done their due diligence, the power legal sends $900,000 to the Chase account. As soon as the funds land in the Chase account, triggers the second wire, $400,000 go to this bank in Canada. Abbas takes a picture of it. Hushpubbby takes a picture of that transfer. He sends confirmation via his Snapchat account to his accomplices, scored. And the remainder of the funds, they get transferred out as well to other bank accounts. The law firm doesn't realize the funds have been sent to the wrong account until later that

month when the client who should have received the funds check their account and discovers the money for the refinance had never been deposited. I love how clown show these guys are in a text message like, hey, did you get that money we stole? Yeah. They are going down. And look, guys, I'm really trying here to make financial crimes rundown, like the rundowns seem exciting.

I know they're boring. Like, I'm not fucking Michael Lewis. Like, what do you want for me? But people keep wanting us to do white collar crime episodes. And I'm like, we're trying what they're all. so boring. They don't make for good podcasts. So this guy, Cran Hassold, who's a guy who works for an anti-scamming tech production company called Agare, he says, the bad actor would redirect emails to the bad actor's email account, craft emails to the customer that look at they're coming from

the vendor, indicate that the vendor had a new bank account, provide updated bank account information, and the money would be gone at that point. The cash trail or allegedly disappeared after his accomplices called Money Mules, convert the money into the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. We're back at Bitcoin. So another one of the crimes in the arrest affidavit is stealing 15 million from a foreign bank or trying to. And then there's $125 million from an English soccer team, which it doesn't say the team, Sean. I have no idea which one it is. Oh, God, I really want to know.

That's a huge amount of money. It's a lot of money. And I'm no rocket scientist, and I imagine there's an art form to this, but it just doesn't seem hard. Like, they really just create email addresses that are letters off from, like, ones that legit law firms or businesses use. and then just trick people into sending money to bank accounts at the criminals control. Like, that's it. Yeah. And the bank accounts were the money stolen from, they're operated by low-level conspiracies.

Those are the money mules. They then convert that money from bank account into Bitcoin, and they send the Bitcoin to Bitcoin wallets that are controlled by Hushpuppie and the other higher-ups. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's just like a switch and bait. It's just so simple. Yeah. But I guess, like, it's due.

was really good at it. So how did they fine and get caught, which is the feds used his Instagram and his Snapchat against him. They just like open sourced everything. And it's wild. From CNN and the affidavit, federal officials detailed how his social media accounts provided a treasure trove information to confirm his identity. His Instagram, for example, had an email and phone number saved for account security purposes. Federal officials got that information and linked that email and phone number to financial transactions and transfers with people the FBI believed were his co-conspirators. One post displayed a birthday cake, top of the Fendi logo, and a miniature image of him surrounded by tiny shopping bags. Investigators used that post to verify his date of birth on a previous

US visa application. I mean... That's amazing. Come on, man. I mean, to start off, like, it's not all from that. One of his money mules actually got busted in the U.S. They got his iPhone. They got it open. There was a UAE number in there undernamed Hush that connected to a Snapchat, and that's when they started going into the social media. Quartz talked about it. They said the FBI found and reviewed Hush Puppies' Instagram account where he also mentioned is the same Snapchat username and styles himself as a real estate developer and matched his post to photos from his passports and other identification documents. the account gave the detective's insight into their target's lifestyle of substantial wealth.

All right. So now the T-shirt is don't Instagram your crimes and I want that birthday cake on it as well. It's going to be amazing. I mean, they're just giving up the info, man. It's like, you know, one of those Twitter posts where it's like, your porn star name is your mother's maiden name. And the street you like, come on, man. People are using that information for a reason. Don't give them that information for free.

So his partner gets knocked too. This guy who went by Mr. Woodbury, he did the same kind of, you know, all that stuff on social media. He gets arrested a month after he had posted for his 29th birthday in front of a yellow Lamborghini and a quote saying, stop letting people make you feel guilty for the wealth you've acquired.

Yeah, he gets the chair for that comment alone for me. I mean, come on, man. Like, you're just laying it out from them. That's bad. So, yeah, not only did they use just all this evidence obtained from the Snapchat and Instagram, but the feds actually got put on to him because he was bragging so much on Instagram.

And maybe we need to reclassify this as like not the greatest scammer to like the dumbest scammer because I don't know, man, he hasn't really earned that title. Like he's got nothing on the god Adam Newman who just like, I mean, he did it all legal or Joe Lowe, Joe Lowe, whatever his name is, who was somewhere in China living like the champion Huckster he is. I think my favorite story from him

is that he was making, like a zillion wire transfers between all the scam companies and a bank was finding like, like, what are you doing over one of the transfers? Like, you're sending all this money. And he told them, this is true. He told them, in my culture, you send the elders money. And then they sent it right back to you as a show of respect. And the bank was like, oh, okay then. Like, oh, it's part of your culture. We'll just let this move go through. It's just, it's just legendary. In my culture, you know? That is definitely BDE. One MDB, BDE. Yeah. Yeah, it's a power move.

So Hushpubby right now, he's facing a minimum of 20 years. He's locked up in prison in California. They're trying to claim the U.S. had no authority that he was kidnapped from Dubai. And his lawyer gave us, he gave us one of the great all-time excuses, which is that he got his money from promoting luxury brands on social media. This is a quote, he's a social media influencer with millions of followers, with millions of people that respect and loved him. And he loved them. and that's what he did. In today's society, that's a business.

I mean, beautiful. You got to love it. And I guess that's a good segue to let you know that, yeah, we're ending the episode, but we're influencers. You know, we want to advertise your brands. We got, we got influence on the podcast. Hit us up to advertise with the Underworld Podcast.

We will, you know, tout your goodness. I mean, we have no more left. You know, we're two freelance journalists. We've been doing this for too long. We should have gotten out and gotten to, like, communications or PR, a long time ago, but we didn't. Now we're edging closer to middle age. Like, if you want us to sell cluster bombs on this

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I'm going to let you guys go. Thanks for joining us again. Thanks for all the support on the Patreon. We really appreciate things are going up every day. And check out the YouTube channel. We literally just put these up, but we're doing some mini episodes to try to get things going there too. And thanks again for listening and for all the support. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, tune in. Tune in next week, I guess. John's going to have something. What are we doing in New Zealand? You got a little documentary coming up. I got a little mini. person reporting thing going on. Yeah, I'm going to speak to a guy who's one of the leaders of Black Power, which is one of the big gangs here. So it's going to be really cool.

Oh, I've actually got something going. I can't talk about this right now. I'll tell you afterwards. But if this happens, we are going to have an episode. Let me tell. Anyway, all right, that's it. Thank you guys. On a World Podcast. Have a good one. We're gone. See, yeah. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread? It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clear visibility, bastard deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance,

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