Obinwanne Okeke, popularly
known as Invictus, is standing trial in the United States of American over an
alleged $11.5m cyber fraud.
A Federal High Court
Sitting in Lagos south west Nigeria today ordered the temporary forfeiture of
N280.5million “warehoused” in the bank accounts of Invictus Oil and Gas
Limited
and Invictus Investment Limited alleged to have been owned by Obinwanne Okeke
“a strong leader of a cybercrime syndicate specialized in business email
compromise.”
The 31-year-old Nigerian,
who was in 2016 celebrated by Forbes as one of Africa’s most outstanding 30
entrepreneurs under the age of 30 and described by the magazine as “proof that
there is hope for Africa,” was arrested in August this year by the American
Federal Bureau of Investigation as the ringleader of a cybercrime syndicate,
which had defrauded a number of American citizens to the tune of $11m “through
fraudulent wire transfer instructions in a massive coordinated business email
compromise scheme.”
The order of the court was
as a result of an application filed and argued before the court by the EFCC
Legal officer Rotimi Oyedepo
The presiding Judge,
Justice Rilwan Aikawa made an order for the temporary forfeiture of the sums of
N240,250,904.46 and N40,304,106.19, which the anti-graft agency said it found
warehoused in First City Monument Bank Plc accounts of Invictus Oil and Gas
Limited and Invictus Investment Limited, respectively.
Mr Oyedepo told the court
that the funds were reasonably suspected to be proceeds of cybercrime and urged
the judge to order their forfeiture to the Federal Government to prevent Okeke
from dissipating same.
No comments:
Post a Comment