Hushpuppi, Woodbery extradited to the United States

DUBAI, UAE – Nigerian internet scam star, Raymoni Igbalode better known as Ray Hushpuppi has been handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) in the United States, the Dubai police has said.

Hushpuppi and his colleague, Woodbery were arrested in June in a special raid tagged “Operation Fox Hunt 2”, by the Dubai Police.

According to the police, Hushpuppi, who described himself as real estate magnate was involved in hidden online fraud network that was committing crimes outside the UAE, including money-laundering, cyber fraud, hacking, criminal impersonating, scamming individuals, banking fraud and identity theft.

Police said the raid resulted in seizure of incriminating documents pertaining to a well-planned international fraud worth Dh1.6 billion.

In a statement, the Dubai Police, said Director FBI, Mr. Christopher Wray praised the UAE Police represented by the Dubai police for their exceptional skill in combating organised transnational cyber crime “Including the recent arrest of Raymond Igbalode Abbas, known as Hushpuppi and Olalekan Jacob  Ponle aka Woodbery who were taken down in Operation Fox Hunt 2’, the Dubai Police said in the statement.

“Wray also extended his appreciation to Dubai Police for their cooperation in extraditing the wanted criminal who committed money laundering and multiple cybercrimes to the United States”.

Narrating the nature of their crime, Dubai Police said Hushpuppi and Woodbery  and his 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.

“The forged documents pertained to online fraud outside the country. The fraud was worth more than Dh1.6 billion. We seized more than Dh150 million in cash from them and confiscated 13 luxury cars worth Dh25 million,” Brig Al Jallaf said.

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