The arrest of suspected Nigerian fraudsters, Ramon Abbas also known as Hushpuppi and Olalekan Ponle also known as Mr Woodberry for cyber crimes and fraud has again turned the spotlight to Nigeria and the battle against cyber crimes.
They were arrested in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and have now been extradited to the United States.
Described as “an international online scammer, Hushpuppi, Woodberry and 10 others were arrested in an operation tagged ‘Fox Hunt 2’ after they were accused of “committing crimes which includes money-laundering, cyber fraud, hacking, impersonation, scamming individuals, banking fraud and identity theft.
They reportedly created fake pages for existing websites in order to redirect victims’ payments to their own accounts.
The gang hacked corporate emails and sent fake messages to clients in order to redirect financial transfers and people’s bank details to their own accounts.
The raid that led to his arrest resulted in the confiscation of incriminating documents of a planned fraud on a global scale worth $435 million.
In total the gang committed fraud amounting to One hundred and Sixty Eight billion naira. (N168bn.
21 personal computers, 47 smartphones, 15 flash drives and 5 hard disks were seized from him.
1, 926, 400 victims were allegedly scammed by Hushpuppi and his gang.
