The Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized 151.8 BTC from the wallet of Olalekan Jacob Ponle infamously known as ‘Mr Woodberry’. In June 2020, Mr Woodberry was arrested in Dubai alongside notorious high-profile fraudster, Hushpuppi over their involvement in a transnational cybercrime network.
The seizure comes as the United States Government filed documents through the District Court for the Northern District Of Illinois seeking forfeiture of any property derived from the proceeds of Mr Ponle’s alleged criminal enterprise.
The court document stated, “Through the violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343 as alleged in Counts One through Eight of the indictment, the United States seeks forfeiture of any property involved in or traceable to the defendant’s violation including, but not limited to 151.885720427 Bitcoin Cryptocurrency.”
The FBI filed a complaint against Mr Ponle in 2020 over how he used Bitcoin to conceal stolen funds from his alleged criminal activities online. On the date of the forfeiture filing (29th April 2022), Bitcoin was trading at $39,457 so the attached value translates to about $6 million.
The Bureau noted that Mr Ponle had been using the same Bitcoin address since 2014 and subsequently defrauded American companies of tens of millions of dollars while converting $6.5 million into 1,500 BTC.
“Preliminary blockchain analysis indicates that Ponle received at least 1,494.71506296 Bitcoin related to these BEC schemes, valued at approximately $6,599,499.98 at the time he received the proceeds,” the document added.
The investigation revealed that Ponle and his accomplices engaged in a scheme known as Business Email Compromise (BEC) which is a phishing attack with the objective of tricking users into taking harmful action, in this case, involving sending money to the attacker.
At the time of his arrest, Ponle went by a number of aliases including ‘Mr Woodberry’, and ‘Mark Kain’ before getting picked up by the Dubai crime unit and extradited to the US on 2nd July along with Ramon Abbas aka Hushpuppi on multiple charges of multi-million dollar fraud.
A US jury found Ponle to be in violation of section 1343 of the United States Codes as they summed up the allegations against him with 8 counts of wire fraud that could see him face jail time of up to 20 years and/or substantial fines.