Exclusive: Convicted Internet Fraudster Olalekan Ponle Alias Woodberry, Has His Fort Dix Prison Petition Thrown Out By A New Jersey Federal Court Because He Did Not Pay The $5 Filing Fee

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The order is signed by Judge Susan D. Wigenton of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, and it ends Olalekan Jacob Ponle’s prison petition before the court reaches a single claim inside it. In the document exclusively obtained by SecretsReporters, Judge Wigenton directed the Clerk of Court to administratively terminate Ponle v. Warden, FCI Fort Dix, Civil Action No. 25-3330 (SDW), without prejudice on 30 April 2025, because Ponle had neither paid the $5 filing fee nor filed a complete application to proceed in forma pauperis, and he had not used the Clerk’s habeas form.

Ponle, known across social media as Woodberry, filed the petition himself from the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix, where he is serving the sentence imposed on him in the Northern District of Illinois. He brought the case under 28 U.S.C. section 2241, the federal habeas statute under which a prisoner attacks the execution of his sentence and the custody under which he is held, rather than filing another direct attack in the court that convicted him. Federal filing rules required the $5 fee or a complete in forma pauperis application showing that he could not pay it, and the court’s order records that he supplied neither and also filed outside the Clerk’s prescribed habeas form.

The termination carries no judgment on the claims inside the defective petition. It was entered without prejudice, and the court left the door open for the petition to be revived if Ponle cures the defects and files an amended petition on the proper form.

The prisoner stopped by a missing $5 filing fee is the same convicted fraudster whose criminal judgment carries restitution of about $8.03 million and the forfeiture of 151.8857 bitcoin, valued at about $6 million when the forfeiture was imposed. Ponle was arrested in Dubai in June 2020 and indicted in the United States over business email compromise schemes that took more than $8 million from seven businesses and attempted about $51 million more. He pleaded guilty in April 2023 to one count of wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. section 1343, and the remaining seven counts were dismissed under the plea.

Judge Robert W. Gettleman sentenced him on 11 July 2023 in United States v. Olalekan Jacob Ponle, No. 1:20-cr-00318, to 100 months in federal prison. The sentence also carried the restitution and bitcoin forfeiture, and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation order takes effect when the prison term ends. Ponle then carried the fight to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in appeal No. 23-2404, and the court affirmed the judgment on 5 August 2024, holding that loss under Sentencing Guidelines section 2B1.1 includes intended loss.

No standalone civil case by or against Ponle was found outside the criminal prosecution and this prison petition. The restitution and forfeiture were imposed inside the Illinois criminal case, and the New Jersey record stands as the separate federal file he opened from Fort Dix and saw administratively terminated at the filing stage.

The post Exclusive: Convicted Internet Fraudster Olalekan Ponle Alias Woodberry, Has His Fort Dix Prison Petition Thrown Out By A New Jersey Federal Court Because He Did Not Pay The $5 Filing Fee appeared first on Secrets Reporters Nigeria - No Place To Hide.