Abbas’ luxurious lifestyle came to an abrupt end in 2020, when he was arrested while living in Dubai.
His Instagram account, which featured pricey cars and designer clothing, was worlds away from his humble beginnings.
Those who knew Abbas as a child had told the BBC that his father was a taxi driver and his mother a market trader, but as he grew older he developed a weakness for splashing the cash. “He was generous. He used to buy beer for everyone around,” a local driver called Seye said.
According to Seye, he allegedly started his fraudulent lifestyle as a “Yahoo boy”, which in Nigeria, refers to men who commit romance fraud by stealing other people’s identities online and swindling their none-the-wiser lovers out of money.
In 2019, one of Abbas’ fraud schemes, which at this point had become worldwide affairs, had plunged the European island of Malta into chaos as payment systems shut down after Abbas tried to launder €13m ($13m) stolen by a gang of North Korean hackers from the Maltese Bank of Valletta in 2019.
