By Yahoo Boy With Portfolio, Invictus Obinwanne Okeke In FBI’s Net For $12 Million Phishing Fruad
For Forbes’ African Young Billionaire poster boy, Obinwanne Okeke, it is end of the road as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested him for conspiracy to commit fraud running into the sum of 12 million US dollars.
This was disclosed yesterday in an affidavit deposed to by one Marshall Ward, a special agent employed by the United States Department of Justice. According to the information disclosed, the investigation was premised on a complaint lodged by representatives of Unatrac Holdings Limited as being a victim of a huge fraud running into millions.
BlackBox Nigeria gathered that
Okeke’s crime is termed phishing. This is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
During his trending days, Invictus was not only on Forbes 30 Under 30, he also featured BBC, given a TED Talk, spoke at London School of Economics Africa Summit, where he was nominated for “Young the African Business Leader” at The AABLA Awards.
Born in Ukpor village in Anambra state on 9 November 1987, Obi is the 17th child of a polygamous father who died when Obi was only 16. He was raised by his mother and other relatives even before his father’s death. A typical grass to grace story, having grown up in poverty, Obinwanne moved from one relative to another to survive. He was said to have moved to Australia to study later on. According to his story, he “did all kinds of jobs just to survive” while studying in Australia. Although there has not been any context to how he got the opportunity to travel to Australia or who sponsored him.
Before his unceremonious arrest, he is often addressed as the Founder of Invictus Group – a business with supposed interests that span across a number of sectors, which included mainly real estate development, energy, and construction.
The Invictus Group is said to be operating in three African countries, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and recently focused on building energy-efficient houses that feed exclusively from solar power.
