Wire fraud convict, Obinwanne Okeke, widely known as Invictus Obi, has lost the appeal he filed against his years’ imprisonment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal after it was voluntarily withdrawn by the convict.
The 33-year-old Nigerian, who was arrested in the U.S. on August 6, 2019, had pleaded guilty to the offence of conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year June.
U.S. authorities said victims lost nearly $11million to the large-scale fraud perpetrated through global business email and computer hacking schemes between 2015 and 2019.
Mr Okeke, formerly celebrated internationally as a successful young African entrepreneur, was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment by a court in the Eastern District of Virginia on February 16.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how the judge, Rebecca Smith, also ordered him to restitute about $10.7million proceeds of his fraud to the U.S. government.
The minutes of the sentencing proceedings seen by PREMIUM TIMES indicated that Mr Okeke was notified of his right of appeal, but waived it in his plea agreement with U.S. authorities.
Despite that the convict filed his notice of appeal against the sentence on Tuesday.
Appeal dismissed
But Mr Okeke, in a “motion to withdraw appeal” he filed on July 16, said he took the decision to terminate the appeal after consulting with his lawyer “both by phone and email.
