Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, popularly known as Hushpuppi, is being linked to a supposed $400,000 money laundering scheme from a prison in the United States, but the circulating document is “fake and intended to get people to visit a scammer EIP website”, according to Gary Warner, an American cybercrime expert.

Abbas, who is currently incarcerated in a California prison on charges of money laundering, was said to have purchased Economic Impact Payments (EIP) debit cards and used them to launder more than $400,000.

Documents circulated on Thursday had claimed Andrew John Innocenti, the special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) monitoring, told a US Magistrate Court on Wednesday that Abbas continued his illegal internet activities in prison.

The claim was that Abbas bought 36 virtual EIP cards and 22 physical EIP cards, the EIP cards containing stolen details of US citizens and residents. He then reportedly collaborated with one ‘AJ’ to use these cards at ATMs and online stores, with Abbas telling ‘AJ’ the exact products to buy online.

But Warner, the Director of Research in Computer Forensics at the University of Alabama, United States, disproved the claims, writing on Twitter: “People are asking me if it is true that #Hushpuppi laundered $400,000 in #Stimulus cards from in prison. The document they show is an edit of a June 2020 Affidavit. The new version is fake, intended to get people to visit a scammer EIP website.”