Olalekan Ponle, better known as Woodberry, pleaded guilty to a wire‑fraud charge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The court set 11 July for his sentencing. Woodberry is widely recognized as an associate of Nigerian international fraudster Ramon Abbas, alias Hushpuppi, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison by a California federal court in November 2022 and ordered to pay roughly $1.8 million in restitution.
Both men were arrested in Dubai on 10 June 2020 for extensive online scams and were extradited to the United States to face separate trials. Hushpuppi initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea to guilty in April 2021, just before a trial was to begin. Woodberry, who had maintained his innocence for more than two years, reversed course at a plea‑change hearing on 6 April 2024. Judge Robert Gettleman accepted his plea, referred the case to the Probation Department for a pre‑sentence investigation, and gave the government 60 days to provide a complete victim list and restitution amounts before sentencing.
According to the plea agreement, Woodberry defrauded a New York‑based company—identified as “Victim Company B”—of approximately $188 191.50 through a business‑email‑compromise scheme. Starting in January 2019, Woodberry and co‑conspirators gained unauthorized access to Victim Company B’s email account, altered security settings to conceal their activity, and on 16 January 2019 sent a fraudulent email from the compromised account requesting a wire transfer of $188 191.50 to a supplier’s bank account that Woodberry controlled. The wire was processed through the Federal Reserve System, moving funds from a New York account to an account ending in 8208 in Nashville, Tennessee.
The following day, Woodberry received confirmation that the money had arrived. He then directed an associate, “Individual B,” to convert roughly $119 000 of the proceeds into Bitcoin, which was transferred to Woodberry’s Bitcoin wallet. Prosecutors say Woodberry had set up the fraudulent bank account nine days earlier, on 7 January 2019, using the alias “Mark Kain.” He instructed Individual B to open a separate business account under the name of Victim Company B’s supplier, providing the account and routing numbers that would later receive the illicit wire.
The government is seeking a full restitution order for the amount owed at sentencing. In describing Hushpuppi, U.S. authorities called him “a prolific international fraudster who conspired to launder tens of millions of dollars through a series of online scams” and noted that his lavish, crime‑funded lifestyle had been flaunted on Instagram until the platform was shut down at the request of the U.S. government.
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