The two Intagram celebrities with millions of followers who were recently arrested by the Dubai police have allegedly amassed millions of dollars through cyber scams.
Olalekan Jacob Pole known as mrwoodberry to instagrammers and Ramon Olorunwa Abbas alias hushpuppi are the most famous among the arrested African nationals.
Police in the emirate say they recovered $40m in cash, 13 luxury cars worth $6.8m, 21 computers, 47 smartphones and the addresses of nearly two million victims, reports BBC.
Abbas and Ponle were both extradited to the US and charged in a Chicago court with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from cybercrimes.
Their modus operandi was to breach into the email accounts of companies, look into the contextual conversations and then divert money into their account by impersonating a party in a transaction.
A number of US companies have fell for this trap. Millions of dollars were transferred into the perpetrator accounts in various countries, which later got converted into cryptocurreny Bitcoin.
In recent years Nigeria has become a hub of such cybercrimes which has led many organiastions and entities worldwide to avoid transactions with those in the country.
“Our value system in Nigeria needs to be checked, especially the emphasis we place on wealth, no matter how you got it,” the economist Ebuka Emebinah told the BBC.
“It’s a culture where people believe that results speak for you. We don’t place as much emphasis on the process and this has built up over time,” he said.
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