Nigerian Billionaire Obinwanne Okeke Arrested by FBI

The FBI has arrested Nigerian billionaire Obinwanne Okeke for allegedly committing fraud to the sum of US$12 million.

The investigation came about following a complaint from Unatrac Holdings Limited, the export office for Caterpillar equipment who are based in the UK. They claim they have been a victim of Okeke’s dealings.

"They reported that Unatrac had been victimised through an email compromise, which ultimately resulted in fraudulent wire transfers totalling nearly 11million US Dollars. After reviewing the documentation provided by the representatives, the FBI opened an investigation in July 2018.

"The FBI discovered that after capturing the legitimate credentials of Unatrac's Chief Financial Officer, the accused was able to log in and access the CFO's entire Office365 account, which included all of his emails and various digital files, the logs indicated that between April 6 and April 20, 2018, the intruder accessed the CFO's account 464 times, mostly from Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from Nigeria.

"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," the investigator stated.

"For example, the finance staff received and processed three invoices to Pak Fei Trade Limited: one for $278,270.66, one for $898, 451.17, and one for $1,957,100.00. In total, nearly $11,000,00 (Eleven 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."

Okeke was once heralded by Forbes as one of the ’30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 to Watch’, just last month he welcomed a new baby.