Business
Details: Scam That Gave Hushpuppi Wealth Revealed, Why Big Biznesses Need To Be Careful As It Becomes Popular In Nigeria
Hushpuppi who was arrested in June 2020 while luxuriating at the very expensive penthouse apartment at the Palazzo Versace Dubai
The real scam that gave infamous spender behind bars, Hushpuppi – real name Ramoni Abbas Olohunwa – wealth has been laid bare.
It is identified as “BEC” according to insight provided into investigation that threw up the multiple charges of money laundering and fraud staring the inglorious celebrity in the face as he awaits trial.
Hushpuppi the self-dubbed “Gucci Master” and the definition of “mindless spending” with over 2million following on Instagram is accused of perpetrating grand scale fraud estimated to be over N106Billion – in concert with others.
“BEC” which is the vehicle for the mind boggling scam is “Business E-mail Compromise” and targets big money businesses through diversion of expected payments.
BEC is adjudged the latest scourge in online fraud with 50% percent of scams perpetrated originating from Nigeria according to data sourced by societynow.ng in a report by Bloomberg.com.
The information at hand revealed that BEC is basically hinged on tricking people to “legitimately’ give away their money or something of great value.
The ploy is that the fraudsters hack into a mail to get access to the targetted company’s database and study the pattern of correspondences between the firm and its clients and based on this knowledge insert themselves into the communication to divert payments by swapping account numbers on invoices for as long as they can go undetected societynow.ng learned.
According to the report monitored on Bloomberg.com by societynow.ng “…No matter the flavor, a BEC scam generally begins with someone hacking into a corporate email account often using social engineering tactics like phishing. Once inside, the perpetrators don’t steal anything, not at first. Instead they quietly begin forwarding copies of incoming and outgoing email to themselves. Then they wait. “They watch it for a number of weeks or months, looking for details of certain payments that are going out, understanding who their customers are, looking at communication patterns,” Hassold says. When they spot an invoice coming in or out, they “use that intelligence to insert themselves into an actual payment that is supposed to be due.”
From there the scam can work two ways: If the scammers have compromised the email of the intended recipient of the payment, they simply create an invoice identical to the real one, swapping in their own bank account details, and resend it from the recipient’s email (often with apologies for the mix-up). If, on the other hand, they’ve compromised the sender, they might send a follow-up invoice from a “spoofed” email that appears at first glance to match the payee’s, or even create an entire company and website, one letter off from the real one”
Hassold, according to the report is Crane Hassold, the senior director of threat research at the cyberdefense company Agari Data Inc. and a former FBI analyst.
Added information in the Bloomberg.com report revealed that the BEC scam revolves around different players who take cuts from the “payouts.”
There is the “Hacker” who accesses the mail, the “Loaders” who control international accounts that can accept huge money without eye brows raised, and the “Money Mules” who own bank accounts through which money is routed to make it disappear or eventually “harvested.”
Hushpuppi who was arrested in June 2020 while luxuriating at the very expensive penthouse apartment at the Palazzo Versace Dubai which he turned residence was living large majorly with his earnings as a Loader.
It is believed that with the records showing that 50% of BEC scams perpetrated around the world originate from Nigeria, it is just a matter of time before records show that big businesses in Nigeria are prone to attacks from BEC scammers – assuming it is not already happening but unreported) – if care is not taken.
