A Nigerian national that was on Forbe's list of the most promising entrepreneurs in Africa stands accused of business email compromise fraud that stole $11 million from one victim alone.
Obinwanne Okeke is the founder of Invictus Group, involved in construction, agriculture, oil and gas, telecoms and real estate, according. In 2016, Forbes added him to its "Africa's 30 under 30" youngbusiness owners.
Fast forward three years later, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issues an arrest warrant in Okeke's name for conspiracies to commit computer and wire fraud.
Long time BEC scammer
According to the FBI affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant, Okeke had been running BEC scams since at least 2016, with some of his partners being involved in scams even before that.
With his co-conspirators, the fraudster worked on creating phishing pages for online services used by various businesses in the US.
In April 2018 Okeke and his associates sent a phishing email to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Unatrac Holding Limited, which is the export sales office for Caterpillar industrial and farming equipment.
The CFO fell for the phishing and sent the login credentials to the fraudsters when they tried to access the email account in Microsoft Office 365.
"Logs indicate that between April 6 and April 20, 2018, the intruder accessed the CFO's account at least 464 times, mostly from Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in Nigeria" reads the affidavit from an FBI agent.
