Two Nigerian Instagrammers caught with $40m cash
Two Nigerians 29-year-old Olalekan Jacob Ponle, who goes by the name “mrwoodbery” on Instagram and 37-year-old Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, “ hushpuppy” or just “hush” was arrested in by Dubai and Emirate police who recovered $40m (£32m) in cash, 13 luxury cars worth $6.8, 21 computers, 47 smartphones and the addresses of nearly two million alleged victims.
Mr Ponle posted a picture on his Instagram standing next to a bright yellow Lamborghini in Dubai, wearing designer jewellery and Gucci clothes from head to toe, “ Stop letting people make you feel guilty for the wealth you’ve acquired” was arrested for alleged money laundering and cyber fraud.
Both were although extradited to the US and charged in a Chicago court with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from cybercrimes, have not yet been asked to plead as they are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.
Glen Donath, a former senior prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC said: “ I think there’s probably a certain arrogance when they believe they’ve been careful about maintaining anonymity in their online identities, but they live high on the hog and get careless on social media.”
The two high-flying Nigerians unwittingly provided crucial information about their identities and activities for American detectives with their Instagram and Snapchat posts.
They were accused of impersonating legitimate employees of various US companies in “ business email compromise “ (BEC) schemes and tricking the recipients into wiring millions of dollars into their own accounts.
Hushpuppi on Instagram was a real estate developer, with a category of videos called “flexing” social media lingo for showing off. The investigators allege the accounts were actually a code word for bank accounts used to receive the proceeds of a fraudulent scheme.
In April, hushpuppi renewed his lease for another year at the exclusive Palazzo Versace apartments in Dubai under his real name and phone number.
Mr Abbas captioned an Instagram picture of a Rolls-Royce saying “ Thank you, Lord, for the many blessings in my life. Continue to shame those waiting for me to be ashamed.”
In one case, a foreign financial institution allegedly lost $14.7m in a cyber-heist where the money ended up in hushpuppi’s bank accounts in multiple countries and according to an FBI affidavit he also was involved in a scheme to steal $124m from an unnamed English Premier League team.
The FBI obtained records from his Google, Apple, iCloud, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts which allegedly contained banking information, passports, communication with conspirators, and records of wire transfers.
The complaint against Mr. Abbas and Mr. Ponle describe tactics that resemble what the company calls Vendor Email Compromise tactics, where scammers compromise an email account and study communication between a customer and a vendor.
The FBI has accused Mr. Ponle of defrauding a Chicago-based company into sending wire transfers of $15.2m. Companies in Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New York, and California are also said to have fallen, victims. The cash trail allegedly disappeared after his accomplices, known as money mules, converted the money into the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
In Nigeria these email scammers are notoriously known as “ Yahoo boys” as they try to convince a recipient to wire money to the other side of the world or they go “Phishing” stealing a user’s identity and personal information for fraud.
In 2019, the FBI said it had received more than 460, 000 complaints of suspected cyber fraud, with losses of more than £3.5bn reported of which only $300m was recovered.
If convicted Mr. Abbas and Mr. Ponle could be locked up for 20 years.