Nigerian Entrepreneur, Invictus Obi Fingered In $11m US FBI Fraud Probe

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Invictus Group, Obinwanne Okeke, popularly known as Invictus Obi, seemed to have erased all traces of his social media existence following reports that the 31-year-old entrepreneur was allegedly linked to an $11 million internet scam in the United States of America.

At 28, Obinwanne came to the limelight when Forbes magazine, an international publication, featured him in its June 2016 cover as one of Africa’s 30 entrepreneurs under 30.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in the US had issued an arrest warrant for Okeke, saying it had also connected Okeke to a series of other internet frauds.

In June 2018, Unatrac Holding Limited, a company which deals in sales of heavy industrial and farm equipment, was said to have approached the FBI over a breach in the email account of its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) 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.

After many months of a forensic investigation into the phoney transaction and activities of the intruder, the FBI followed the suspect’s online trail which led them to social media accounts with username @invictusobi allegedly owned by Okeke.

The federal agents were able to merge the intruder’s identity with the owner of the social media accounts and have gone after Okeke.