Hushpuppi
The United States government has asked for a court order to prevent the disclosure of certain ‘sensitive’ information relating to the fraud case involving Ramon Abass, a former Nigerian Instagram celebrity who is better known as Hushpuppi.
The information the authorities want to be protected include details concerning victims, yet-to-be-apprehended conspirators, and investigation techniques.
The specific pieces of information are contained in some documents the US authorities are to hand over to Mr. Abass’ defence team ahead of the commencement of his trial in a US District Court in California in May.
Nigeria’s Premium Times reported that on Wednesday it obtained the application filed at the California court on February 26.
It was filed jointly by the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Anil Antony, and the defence counsel, Louis Shapiro.
US authorities said the documents they intended to present to the defendant contained “sensitive information” such as the personal identifying information (PII) of real persons, including personal names, dates of birth, addresses, government identification numbers, financial account numbers, email addresses and photographs.
They added that the materials “might also contain information within the scope of the Privacy Act.”
The application reads in part, “As part of its investigation in the above-captioned case, the government is in possession of documents related to the charges against defendant, and seeks to provide those documents to counsel for defendant (although some of the materials may exceed the scope of the government’s discovery obligations).
“The government’s discovery productions have consisted of, and future discovery productions will consist of, thousands of pages of documents, as well as additional audio and video files, forensic extractions of data from digital devices, and PDF and/or HTML files containing documents seized from online accounts.”
In the application, it was also stated that the purpose of the proposed Protective Order was to prevent the unauthorised dissemination, distribution, or use of materials containing the sensitive information.