Nigerian national targeted Caterpillar Inc. in $11 million fraud scheme. Now he’ll serve 10 years.

A Nigerian man was sentenced in Norfolk federal court on Tuesday to 10 years in prison in a massive online financial fraud scheme.

Obinwanne Okeke, 33, pleaded guilty in June to one count of wire fraud pertaining to the bilking of a subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc. — the Illinois-based heavy equipment manufacturer — out of nearly $11 million.

Okeke also was a key player in a fraud ring that included “hundreds of victims” — some in Virginia — between 2015 and 2019, according to court documents filed with the June plea agreement.

It’s a steep fall from grace for Okeke, who once ran the Invictus Group, a Nigerian-based company that invested in energy, telecommunications and other industries. He gained fame when he graced the cover of Forbes Africa magazine as an “under 30 1/4 u2033 entrepreneur in 2016.

The federal wire fraud charge carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, with discretionary federal sentencing guidelines calling for a term of between about eight and 10 years. After the case was investigated by the Norfolk FBI office, federal prosecutors in Hampton Roads asked for a sentence within that range.

“The defendant’s participation in the theft of over $10 million through subterfuge and impersonation resulted in dramatic ripple effects that has spread across finances, relationships, reputations and trust,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Samuels wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Victims to the scams, he wrote, have faced frustrations and stresses, leading to physical and mental health problems in some cases. “When a faceless crime like this occurs, the resulting insecurity leaves victims feeling haunted and hunted,” Samuels wrote.

But Okeke’s attorney, John Iweanoge, asserted that a sentence that high would be “nothing short of overly punitive for a 33-year-old, nonviolent, first-time offender.”

“He is highly educated and has been internationally recognized as a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist,” Iweanoge wrote in a sentencing paper, calling the crime “an aberration from an otherwise exemplary life.”

Sixteen people submitted character references for Okeke, asking for leniency and saying that Okeke — the youngest of 17 children — always has helped others in his life.

An older brother, Alex Ike Okeke, a transportation official in Nigeria, said Obinwanne was raised in a disciplined family and “cries regularly when he’s alone” in remorse for what he did.

“Obinwanne’s lapse in choices is completely out of character and inconsistent with this family’s tradition,” Alex Okeke wrote. “It is also out of kilter and incompatible with the character and nature of Obinwanne that we have all come to know and respect.”

Senior U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith gave Okeke 10 years to serve at a hearing Tuesday in Norfolk, and ordered him to pay $10.7 million in restitution.

The case began in June 2018, when an exporting subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc. — Unatrac Holding Limited, based in the United Kingdom — called the FBI to say it had been defrauded.

Court documents explained that Unatrac’s chief financial officer fell prey to an email three months earlier that purported to be from Unatrac’s Microsoft Office365 service. “Believing the page to be real, he entered his login credentials,” the statement of facts said.

The scammer used the executive’s user name and password to gain access to the CFO’s “entire account,” including emails and digital files. The executive’s account was accessed 464 times from overseas — mostly from Nigeria — over the next few weeks, the statement of facts said.

The scammer then sent bills and “wire transfer requests” from the CFO’s email address to others in Unatrac, sometimes with fake invoices included.

Unatrac unwittingly sent nearly $11 million in payments to overseas accounts as a result, thinking the CFO had authorized them, the statement of facts said. By the time the fraud was discovered, it was too late to stop most of the payments.

But the scammer sent one file — Unatrac’s terms and conditions — from the CFO’s account to an outside email address: inconoclast1960@gmail.com.

That proved to be Okeke’s downfall, giving Norfolk FBI Special Agent Marshall Wall a crucial break in the 13-month investigation. The FBI traced that email to Okeke through his separate — but linked — Gmail account, court documents say.

An FBI search warrant revealed that the account was used to create other fraudulent websites and emails, capture victims’ identities and passwords, and make purchases.

Investigators also uncovered “hundreds” of emails and chats between conspirators about how to “trick unsuspecting users into providing their account credentials,” Wall’s affidavit said. More than 600 email passwords were discovered on the scammers’ various accounts, as were copies of driver’s licenses and passports.

Okeke was arrested by federal agents at Dulles International Airport in August 2019, and he’s being held by the Western Tidewater Regional Jail in Suffolk until he’s moved to a federal prison.

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com