Obinwanne Okeke, Invictus Group
CEO, who is popularly known as Invictus Obi, was arrested at the Dulles
International Airport, while leaving the United States.
According to information obtained
from the US federal court in Virginia, US, Okeke was scheduled to return to
Nigeria four day after a complaint was filed against him at the court, and was
arrested at the airport, just before he got on the flight to Nigeria.
An order of detention pending
trial was filed on August 2, 2019, on the grounds that “by a preponderance of
evidence that no condition or combination of conditions of release will reasonably
assure the defendant’s (Okeke) appearance as required”.
TheCable reports that a source familiar about the
matter disclosed via mail that “the attached court documents from the US
federal court in Norfolk, Virginia confirm that Okeke was indeed arrested by
the FBI, on August 6 at the Dulles International Airport”.
According to his arrest warrant, he was taken for violation of US laws as it concerns
“conspiracy to commit computer fraud” and “conspiracy to commit wire fraud”.
 |
| The Arrest Warrant |
The affidavit sworn by Marshall
Ward, a special agent with FBI, had said as of August 2, 2019, “the date of
this application, OKEKE is currently in the United States, and is scheduled to
depart the country on August 6, 2019”.
“Therefore, a warrant for his
arrest is immediately required to apprehend him and prevent his retum to
Nigeria, where he would be beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.”
THE BACKGROUND
In June 2018, Unatrac Holding
Limited, a company which deals in sales of heavy industrial and farm equipment,
was said to have approached the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) over a
breach in the email account of its chief financial officer where a fraudulent
transfer of funds was done.
The intruder was said to have
sent phishing emails containing a web link, purportedly to the login page of
the CFO’s online email account hosted by Microsoft Office 365.
Believing the link to be genuine,
the CFO was said to have imputed his username and password from where the
intruder got full access to the account and sent a fraudulent wire transfer
request to the company’s internal financial team.
Acting under the impression that
the email emanated from the CFO, the finance staff processed approximately 15
payments between April 11 to 19, 2018, totalling $11 million.
‘INVICTUS OBI MAY GET CLOSE TO
20-YEAR JAIL TERM’
Okeke, who requested to for
substitution of legal counsel is now being represented by John O. Iweanoge, II and THE IWEANOGES FIRM.
The Iweanoges took over from Rahul Sharma, a US federal public defender.
Based on precedence, Okeke could
get between five and twenty years jail term for conspiracy to commit computer
and wire fraud.
According to the Legal
Information Institute, anyone who “knowingly and with intent to defraud,
accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access,
and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything
of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only
of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in
any 1-year period”.
If the financial value of
information taken exceeds $5,000, the convicted shall be subject to a fine or
imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both.
As for wire fraud, a person
convicted for a single act of wire fraud can result in fines and up to 20 years
in prison, according to criminal defence attorneys in the United States.
Persons familiar with wire fraud
cases in the US revealed that a combination of these sentences could
result in a higher jail term for the estranged Nigerian entrepreneur.
Okeke has since faded of social
media.
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