A Nigerian entrepreneur who was nominated for Africa’s most prestigious award for businessmen has been imprisoned in the United States for masterminding a multimillion-dollar cyber-fraud plan.
Obinwanne Okeke headed a legal group that utilized email-dependent cyber-assaults to steal credentials from hundreds of victims from about 2015 to 2019. The information they swiped was applied to focus on corporations with fraudulent wire-transfer requests and phony invoices.
British firm Unatrac Keeping Constrained, the export profits business office for American Fortune 100 corporation Caterpillar, was amongst Okeke’s victims.
A Unatrac executive unwittingly revealed their login qualifications to Okeke’s felony corporation just after slipping victim to a phishing email in April 2018.
“Okeke participated in the effort to victimize Unatrac by means of fraudulent wire transfers totaling just about $11m, which was transferred overseas,” claimed the US Attorney’s Business for the Eastern District of Virginia in a statement introduced February 16.
According to court paperwork, Okeke engaged in other types of cyber-fraud, together with creating fraudulent web internet pages and sending phishing e-mails to capture email credentials. His actions caused economic loss to quite a few victims.
“Through subterfuge and impersonation, Obinwanne Okeke engaged in a multi-calendar year world-wide enterprise email and computer hacking plan that caused a staggering $11 million in losses to his victims,” explained Raj Parekh, acting US Legal professional for the Jap District of Virginia.
30-a few-12 months-previous Okeke is the founder of Invictus Group, which operates in Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia and was picked by the African Brand Congress to acquire the Most Innovative Investment decision Enterprise of the Calendar year Award 2017.
Nominated for the AABLA Awards in the classification of Younger African Company Chief (West Africa), Okeke is a typical contributor to the Forbes Africa magazine. He also previously appeared on the magazine’s “30 underneath 30” list.
On June 18, 2020, Okeke pleaded guilty to a cost of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was sentenced to ten many years in jail on February 16.
“This sentencing demonstrates the FBI’s dedication to doing the job with our partners at the Section of Justice and our international counterparts to locate cyber-criminals throughout the globe and provide them to the United States to be held accountable,” reported Brian Dugan, distinctive agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk Discipline Workplace.
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