Ramon Olorunwa Abbas aka Hushpuppi was ‘kidnapped’ by FBI from Dubai to the United States, his lawyer says.
Hushpuppi who was arrested in Dubai alongside Olalekan Jacob Ponle (aka Mr Woodberry) where they lived, appeared in a Chicago court on July 3 after being accused of multimillion-dollar fraud and money laundering by the United States .
The United Arab Emirates has no extradition treaty with the United States but Dubai police said they had been extradited to the US.
A spokesman for the US Department of Justice told the BBC that Hushpuppi was expelled from Dubai and was not extradited. He did not answer how he ended up in US custody.
Gal Pissetzky the lawyer hired by Hushpuppi told BBC that he made his money legitimately and was not a criminal.
He said;
“He is 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,”
“In my opinion, the FBI and the government here acted illegally when they kidnapped him from Dubai without any legal process to do so,” Mr Pissetzky told the BBC.
“There was no extradition, there were no legal steps taken, there were no court documents filed, it was simply a call to the FBI. He is not a citizen of the United States, the US had absolutely no authority to take him,” his lawyer says.
“If Dubai wanted to expel him, they should have expelled him back to Nigeria. I’ve never heard of anything like that. That is the real story here.”
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