As Ramon Abbas popularly known as
Ray Hushpuppi and his gang members were extradited to the United States, the
29-year-old Olalekan Jacob Ponle, better known as Woodberry, who allegedly
orchestrated an international cyber fraud scheme targeting several U.S.-based
companies has been charged in U.S. District Court in Chicago with conspiracy to
commit wire fraud.
And the schemes resulted in
attempted or actual losses to victim companies in the tens of millions of
dollars, including a Chicago-based company that was defrauded into sending wire
transfers totaling $15.2 million, the complaint states.
Well, Mr. Woodberry made an initial
court appearance this morning in Chicago. U.S, Magistrate Judge Jeffrey T.
Gilbert set a detention hearing for July 9, 2020, at 4:00 p.m.
The complaint describes several
instances in which one or more unknown subjects gained unauthorized access to a
U.S.-based company’s email account and sent messages to unwitting employees
claiming to be from the company or a known business contact.
“The emails were nearly identical
to prior legitimate emails sent over the company’s email account, but the
fraudulent emails instructed victims to wire funds to a bank account that was
set up by money mules at the direction of Ponle”, the complaint states.
”Ponle then instructed the mules to
convert the fraud proceeds to Bitcoin and send them to a virtual wallet that
Ponle owned and operated”, the complaint states.
”In addition to the Chicago-based
companies, other victims included companies based in California, Kansas,
Michigan, Iowa and New York”, the complaint states.
And the conspiracy to commit wire
fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison.
Thus, if convicted, the Court must
impose a reasonable sentence under federal sentencing statutes and the advisory
U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
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