Arthur Greene
“Stop letting people make you feel guilty for the wealth you’ve acquired,” posted Olalekan Jacob Ponle on Instagram in May, as the caption of a picture of him next to a yellow Lamborghini.
Little did Ponle know that this was one of many flashy social media posts now being used as evidence of cyber fraud.
In June, Dubai police arrested Ponle, known on social media as “mrwoodberry”, along with 11 others involved in a large-scale cyber scam.
Police in the country seized $40 million (R595 million) in cash, 13 luxury cars worth R101 million, 21 computers, 47 smartphones and the addresses of nearly 2 million alleged victims.
Among those arrested was the famous “real estate developer” known on social media as “hushpuppi”. Real name Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, “Hush” has 2,5 million followers on Instagram.
He gathered such a massive following through his flashy displays of wealth.
“It’s a different type of GLOW and STANDARD when you start hopping out of Rolls Royces to catch a jet just to attend fashion shows in a different continent,” Abbas wrote alongside a picture of him standing next to a private jet.
Abbas and Ponle were extradited to the US in June, and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from cybercrimes.
The two men stand accused of impersonating actual employees of several US companies, and convincing those companies in emails to wire up to tens of millions of dollars into their own accounts.
The suspects are even alleged to have been involved in a scheme which attempted to steal almost R2 billion from an unnamed English Premier League team.
Their extensive social media posts provided valuable information to investigators about their wealth and activities.
“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,” Glen Donath, a former senior prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office in Washington DC, told the BBC.
While Abbas claims to have made his wealth developing real estate, the ‘houses’ are in fact alleged to be a huge number of bank accounts he has stolen from.
Image source: @101nairacom
