Dubai Police hands over Hushpuppi and Woodberry to FBI

Ramon Igbalode Abbas, also known as Hushpuppi, and Olalekan Jacon Ponle aka Woodberry have been handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States.

According to a statement, the Director of FBI, Christopher Wray, praised the role of Dubai Police in arresting Hushpuppi and Woodbery and handing them over to the US.

“Director of FBI expressed his thanks for the exceptional efforts [of Dubai Police] in fighting organised cyber crimes and arresting Hushpuppi and Woodbery,” Dubai Police said in the statement on Thursday.

The Nigerian nationals were arrested on June 10 in Dubai with 10 other suspects on allegations of fraud, involving huge money.

According to Dubai Police, the gang used to hack corporate emails and send fake emails to corporate customers to change money transfers to the gang’s personal banking accounts.

“They were designing and mimicking company and bank websites to steal credit card data and illegally obtain victims’ money before laundering the cash,” said Brigadier Jamal Al Jallaf Director of Criminal Investigation Department at Dubai Police.

During the arrest, police found a huge amount of data on individuals, companies, bank accounts, credit cards as well as documents of money laundering, online fraud and hacking accounts of victims outside the UAE.

Police confiscated 21 computers, 47 smartphones, 15 memory cards, five hard disks containing 119,580 fraud files as well as addresses of nearly two million victims.