₦airaland Forum

Listen to his BBC interview here too. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p065dtt3

Crime doesn't pay!

Yes, many a Nigerian billionaire got their validation from the American publication, FORBES, which started the rating trend that has now become the benchmark, from an African perspective, to know who a billionaire is or not.

It is, for many Nigerian money-men, a bragging right to be rated by Forbes, but the case may no longer be the same with the arrest of Obinwanne Okeke fondly called InvictusObi, and the reality that Forbes may have become or been compromised all along.

In a society bereft of role models, Obiwanne Okeke was, until as you read, the quintessential young, wealthy and celebrated businessman, with an expansive fandom of fawning youth and an enthusiastic media gleefully lapping up all stories about him.

At 31, Obinwanne was the poster boy of grass to grace stories; the boy who rose from nothing to something. Many even likened him to the rose that grew out of concrete because he was the 17th child of a polygamous father who died when Obinwanne was 16. Things became difficult for the young man, necessitating his moving from one relative to another. He later moved to Australia to study where he said he “did all kinds of jobs just to survive.” There is no context whatsoever to how he got the chance to travel to Australia if he ever did.

Obinwanne later founded the Invictus Group of Companies, an investment conglomerate dealing in construction, agriculture, oil and gas, renewable energy, telecoms, and real estate. In 2017, Invictus Group was named as Africa’s Most Innovative Investment Company of the Year by African Brand Congress. The same year, he was nominated in the Young African Business Leader (West Africa) category for the All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA). In 2018, he was nominated amongst 100 Most Influential Young Nigerians by Avance Media.

But he became a continental sensation of a sort in 2016 when he was named in Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30 list and was featured in the magazine’s June cover. In the prologue to the article, the magazine wrote, “FORBES AFRICA spent months looking for the best this continent has to offer. Research coupled with nominations from our readers brought the number to 250 potential Under 30s. We worked for weeks, verifying and investigating, to whittle it down. We favoured entrepreneurs with fresh ideas and took into account their business size, location, potential, struggles and determination.

A panel of judges then debated the final 30.” In the end, the influential American magazine said Okeke was primus inter pares among 600 of the brightest young entrepreneurs, breakout talents and change agents in 20 different sectors that made the list. It went on to use his picture on the cover of that particular edition.
Alas, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, has revealed that Obinwanne is nothing more than a fraudster.

In a painstaking investigation led by Special Agent Marshall Ward of the FBI, Obinwanne was fingered and subsequently arrested for wire fraud valued at over $12m. According to the investigation, “In June 2018, Unatrac Holding Limited, the export sales office for Caterpillar heavy industrial and farm equipment, headquartered in the United Kingdom, contacted the FBI. 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. The investigation, painstaking and far-reaching, lasted more than a year during which Obinwanne emerged as the principal culprit and has since been arrested while on his regular visit to the United States.

http://instablog9ja.com/2019/08/16/how-high-tech-fbi-investigation-led-to-the-arrest-of-forbes-celebrated-nigerian-obinwanneokeke-invictusobi-for-12m-wire-fraud-during-his-recent-trip-to-the-u-s-swipe/

More photos

PS: PLEASE READ MY HUSTLE ON MY SIGNATURE. IT'S what I know and do. MY PAST WORKS ARE ENOUGH PROOF

We gonna continue huzzling legit till we hammer. This ain't gonna be our path to success.

I am gonna Like this post as a reminder to never stop huzzling legitimately

I am also gonna Share this post to remind myself and others to always remember Fraud Never Pays.

Do same!!!

EduTechTainMent

Lalasticlala
Mynd44
Seun

This is a front page material. He was the guy that was tracked through his email details he exposed on his nairaland profile.

When convicted in the US for wire frauds, whats the usual sentence?

Interesting reaction from twitter users

Na dem!!! "I suffered so much, i used to trek from Aba to Lagos and today i drive a Rolls Royce". All them overnight millionaires with their fake inspirational stories making the real hardworking, honest struggling men feel bad, nah so them go expose all of una this year......

Crime does not pay no matter how successful you become you are still a thief no matter how highly place

Motivational speaker for day, thief for night

Patiently waiting for them to burst the likes of e money and his gang because you cannot tell me he is clean as we do not know the source of his money and public display of wealth.
99 day for a thief and one day for the owner

This goes to all the scammers, dont worry your time is coming. Most of you think you are smart but there are.smarter people to fish u out.

This is interestingly interesting Crime never pays... No matter how smart you are...Na America create computer so they will fish you out.

this thief did not fear God oo
12million Usd??
Tomorrow they will tell u Nigeria is a third world country with so much to explore but all na wash.

Motivational speakers cum thieves.

Foolish man

You know you're into shady deals yet you're going around fighting for Forbes list. You can use money to buy chief title, ceremonial award here in Nigeria but anything that has to do with international award expect FBI to go after you.

This case made me to remember the first law of hacking which is IP address. If you cannot protect your IP address then forget anything you're doing online.

Naija

Awon Forbes list

CFO/CEO scams with OWA as sender..

Him water don pass garri

the main reason why I don't envy/follow/praise/support Nigerians with unknown source of income....our useless bloggers have made rich thieves famous


these thieves are so foolish that they think they can't be caught, especially when the fooolishly display their ill-gotten wealth online just to remain popular.


have everyone noticed that hushpoppi and co haven't visited USA?

Really you guys are going to milk this.

Not everyone who is rich made their money legitimately. This is not a Nigerian-only fact.

Elizabeth Holmes was worth as much as $4.5b. She wasn't just ranked on Forbes, but celebrated the world over as the youngest richest self-made female billionaire. Turns out, she was running a scam. Today, she's looking at multiple lawsuits that could send her to jail.

Texan Billionaire Stanford effectively ran a $7b ponzi scheme. He's serving time now for 110 years. In case you're wondering; no he is not a Nigerian.

Forbes wasn't compromised then. Why would it be now?

Good thing Okeke is getting his comeuppance. But that is all there is to it. Now let this story die already!

-Lord

This was where he was listed on forbes Africa under 30.

Not knowing he's a FRAUDSTER!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2016/06/06/africas-most-promising-entrepreneurs-forbes-africas-30-under-30-for-2016/#73e663a51f43

Envy people ar your own risk

Imagine the scammer saying in the BBC interview that he felt offended when Buhari tagged youths as lazy.
That Forbes Africa under 30 na scam list

Make una leave dah guy na haba

Name checkers stay clear


His cup don full

Original Yahoo plus

This week Nigerian image just got dragged further deeply into the mud

Siasia
Invictus

What's hurtful is that sincere Nigerian hustler whose chances oversees got blocked due to the general image and perception about Nigeria due to these unscrupulous elements

Case

Money! Money!! Money!!![b][/b]

Nigerians!!!