Obinwanne Okeke, the Nigerian ‘businessman’ arrested in the
United States last August for fraud, has admitted to American authorities that
his participation in the fraudulent schemes for which he has pleaded guilty
“was undertaken knowingly, intentionally and unlawfully and not as a result of
an accident, mistake or other innocent reason.”
Mr Okeke, who was charged with two counts of computer fraud
and wire fraud, also said he decided to plead guilty because he realised that
the findings by investigators and the ‘statement of facts’ filed in court by
prosecutors are true and accurate.
He said had the matter proceeded to trial, he was sure the
United States authorities would prove the allegations against him beyond a
reasonable doubt.
Mr Okeke’s explanations are contained in the Statement of
Facts submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
by G. Zachary Terwilliger (United States attorney), Brian J. Samuels (assistant
United States Attorney) and Mathew P. Mattis ( special assistant United States
attorney).
The document was filed in open court on June 18 as the
‘businessman’, also known as Invictus Obi in Nigeria, capitulated and pleaded
guilty. He is to be sentenced on October 22.
Mr Okeke’s attorney, John Iweanoge, also agreed, saying
pleading guilty remained the best course of action for his client.
“I have carefully reviewed the above Statement of Facts with
him,” Mr Iweanoge said. “To my knowledge, his decision to stipulate to these
facts is an informed and voluntary one.”
The Statement of Facts which the three United States
Attorney deposed to and for which Mr Okeke pleaded guilty read as follows:
“If this matter were to proceed to trial, the United States
of America would prove beyond a reasonable doubt, by competent and admissible
evidence, the following facts:
1. Beginning on a date unknown, but believed to be in or
about 2015, and continuing until in or about at least 2019, in the Eastern
District of Virginia and elsewhere, OBINWANNE OKEKE, the defendant herein, and
others known and unknown did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire, and agree
with each other and others known and unknown to knowingly devise and intend to
devise a scheme and artifice to defraud and for obtaining money and property by
means of materially false and fraudulent pretences, representations, and
promises, for which the defendants and conspirators transmitted and caused to
be transmitted by means of wire communications in interstate commerce certain
writings, signs, signals and sounds, for the purpose of executing the scheme
and artifice, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343.
2. An investigation by federal authorities revealed that the
primary purpose of the conspiracy was for the conspirators to obtain funds
through fraudulent means by engaging in fraudulent business emails, phishing
and other computer-based schemes.
3. It was a part of the conspiracy and the scheme and
artifice that conspirators, including the defendant, sent phishing emails to
one or more businesses in an effort to obtain login credentials of employees.
4. It was further a part of the conspiracy and the scheme
and artifice that the conspirators, including defendant, obtained legitimate
credentials of other individuals that the conspirators then used to commit
fraudulent acts targeting other businesses and individuals in order to obtain
money and other property, including, but not limited to, accessing protected
computers without authorization, sending fraudulent wire transfer requests,
using fake invoices and viewing and downloading files belonging to other
individual and business victims.
5. It was further a part of the conspiracy and the scheme
and artifice that the conspirators, including defendant, unlawfully obtained
funds belonging to other individuals and/or business entities and caused the
transfer of funds to accounts controlled by the conspirators and defendant.
6. It was further a part of the conspiracy and the scheme
and artifice that the conspirators, including defendant, obtained and compiled
credentials of hundreds of victims, including victims in the Eastern District
of Virginia.
7. It was further a part of the conspiracy and the scheme
and artifice that the conspirators, including defendant, engaged in and caused
wire communications affecting interstate and foreign commerce between the
Eastern District of Virginia and locations outside of the Commonwealth of
Virginia.
8. Unatrac Holding Limited, a company headquartered in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), is the export sales office for Caterpillar heavy
industrial and farm equipment.
In or about the Spring of 2018, Unatrac was victimized in
their United Kingdom offices through an email compromise scheme, in which the
defendant participated, which ultimately resulted in fraudulent wire transfers
totalling nearly $ 11 million (11 million US Dollars). Some portion of these
funds was subsequently recovered.
9. On or about April 1, 2018, Unatrac’s Chief Financial
Officer (“CFO”) received a phishing email containing a web link, purportedly to
the login page of the CFO’s online email account hosted by Microsoft Office365.
When the CFO opened the link, it instead led him to a phishing website crafted
to imitate the legitimate Office365 login page. Believing the page to be real,
he entered his login credentials, which were captured by an unknown intruder
who controlled the spoofed web page.
10. After capturing the legitimate credentials, the intruder
was able to remotely login and access the CFO’s entire Office365 account, which
included all of his emails and various digital files. Between April 6 and April
20, 2018, the intruder accessed the CFO’s account at least 464 times, mostly
from Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in Nigeria, but also from other
identified locations.
11. With full access to the account, the intruder sent
fraudulent wire transfer requests from the CFO’s email account to members of
Unatrac’s internal financial team. The intruder also attached fake invoices to
the emails to enhance the credibility of the requests. For many of the
invoices, the intruder used content sourced from within the CFO’s own account,
ostensibly to make the invoices appear authentic. Knowing that invoices
typically originate from outside the organization, the intruder also apparently
sent emails to the CFO’s account from an external address, and then forwarded
them to the financial team.
12. During the period of unauthorized access, activity logs
show that the intruder created or modified email filter rules for the CFO’s
account on seven occasions between April 10 and April 17, 2018. The rules
intercepted legitimate emails to and from employees on the financial team,
marked them as read, and moved them to another folder outside the inbox. These
rules appeared to have been created in an attempt to hide from the CFO any
responses from the individuals to whom the intruder was sending fabricated
emails.
13. Believing the wire transfer requests had come from their
CFO, Unatrac finance staff processed a number of fraudulent payments between
April 11 and April 19, 2018. In some cases, several payments were sent to the
same account. For example, the finance staff received and processed three
invoices to Pak Fei Trade Limited: one for $278,270.66, one for $898,461.17,
and one for $1,957,100.00. In total, nearly $11,000,000 (11 million US dollars)
was sent, all of which went to overseas accounts. By the time the fraud was
discovered, it was too late to cancel the transfers, and Unatrac was able to
recover very little of the transferred funds.
14. With full access to the Microsoft Office365 account, the
intruder was also able to browse the CFO’s files hosted by Microsoft’s online
file storage service OneDrive. The intruder viewed at least 15 of the CFO’s
files. The intruder downloaded one of these files, which contained portions of
Unatrac’s standard terms and conditions and sent it to the external email
address iconoclast1960@gmail.com.
15. The iconoclast1960@gmail.com was an account subsequently
determined to be associated with and used by defendant. The defendant is a
Nigerian citizen and entrepreneur who operated a group of companies known as
the Invictus Group.
16. The defendant used the iconoclast1960@gmail.com email
account and other accounts to engage with extensive discussions with other
conspirators about creating fraudulent web pages, designed to trick
unsuspecting users into providing their account credentials.
17. Between at least December 2017 and October 2018, the
defendant (using the iconoclastl960@gmail.com email address) and another
individual discussed over e-mail specific details about how to create
fraudulent web pages that would capture users* email and password credentials.
In order to demonstrate and test their web designs, the
iconoclast1960@gmail.com and other accounts also sent each other copies of code
used to create the fraudulent web pages.
18. The defendant and other individuals acted to compile
collected credentials of others for use in acts of fraud.
19. Among these credentials were passwords of accounts
belonging to victims located within the Eastern District of Virginia. Emails
dated January 17, 2018, contained the passwords for victims in Mechanicsville,
Virginia and Midlothian, Virginia. An email dated January 18, 2019, contained a
password for a victim in Richmond, Virginia, and an email dated February 26,
2018, contained a password for a victim in Ashburn, Virginia. The capture of
these passwords was facilitated by wire communications affecting interstate
commerce between the Eastern District of Virginia and locations outside
Virginia.
20. Other email accounts that were linked to or corresponded
with conspirators’ accounts engaged in fraudulent schemes targeting individuals
and businesses in the Eastern District of Virginia and elsewhere from the time
period beginning in at least 2015.
21. The defendant stipulates and agrees that his
participation in the events described was undertaken knowingly, intentionally
and unlawfully and not as a result of an accident, mistake or other innocent
reason.
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