Nigerian Entrepreneur Osang Usie Otukpa Arrested in $8M Scam Targeting Australians
Osang Usie Otukpa, a Nigerian entrepreneur known for his footwear company Flykicks, has been arrested after allegedly defrauding 139 Australians out of over $8 million in an elaborate online scam.
The 34-year-old was apprehended in Lagos, Nigeria, after returning from the United States, where part of the stolen funds are believed to have been transferred. Otukpa’s capture followed a coordinated effort between Nigerian law enforcement, Australian private investigator Ken Gamble from IFW Global, and Michael Roberts, the founder of Rexxfield Cybercrime Investigations. The operation was supported by Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Authorities in both Australia and the US joined forces to bypass bureaucratic delays and accelerate the investigation. As a result, some of the stolen funds have already been located and frozen, with hopes of recovering more during the legal proceedings.
Investigations revealed that Otukpa used multiple aliases—including Ford Thompson, Oscar Donald Tyler, Michael Haye, Jose Vitto, and Kristin Davidson—to lure victims into investing in a fraudulent cryptocurrency platform called the Liquid Asset Group (LAG). Many of the known victims were from Australia’s Victoria, New South Wales, and the Northern Territory, although authorities suspect there are additional victims.
In an unexpected twist, one of the scam’s largest victims, Brian Jacques Creigh, a former director of the crypto investment company Panacea Capital, has himself been banned by the Australian corporate regulator, ASIC. Creigh, who had invested his own and other people’s funds into the LAG scam, was found to be unlicensed to act as a financial advisor and had given false evidence to investigators. ASIC has permanently banned him from involvement in the financial services sector.
The scam, which has been described as a vast web of fraud across three countries, involved the conversion of stolen funds into Bitcoin and their transfer to suspect-controlled wallets. Investigators traced over $2 million in deposits to accounts in the US, Canada, and the UK, which were used to further conceal the illicit transactions.
One of the Australian victims, who wished to remain anonymous, expressed the devastating impact of the scam, stating, “There are a lot of families bleeding out and hurting. We need to stay focused on recovering what we can.”
Despite the challenges, authorities are optimistic that further recoveries can be made as investigations continue into Otukpa’s financial operations.