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19-year-old Nigerian student in the United Kingdom, Oluwatobiloba Akinrinola,\n<\/p>\nA 19-year-old Nigerian student in the United Kingdom, Oluwatobiloba Akinrinola, and another man have been jailed for a combined 18 years after a court found them guilty of participating in a robbery and blackmail plot in which victims were assaulted, humiliated and filmed for social media.\n<\/p>\n
According to the BBC, Akinrinola, of Slippers Place, London, was sentenced to seven years\u2019 imprisonment on Monday at Leicester Crown Court, while 20-year-old Richile Vangu was handed an 11-year jail term with an additional three-year extended licence period.\n<\/p>\n
The court heard that the pair were involved in a planned attack on partygoers at a gathering in North Kilworth, Leicestershire, on November 21, 2025.
\n19-year-old Nigerian student in the United Kingdom, Oluwatobiloba Akinrinola,\n<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said the victims were threatened with a knife, robbed of designer items and forced to perform a dance for TikTok while the suspects recorded them.<\/p>\n
The court was told that Vangu, who introduced himself as \u201cTrixta\u201d, demanded that each victim transfer \u00a31,000 and threatened to stab them if they refused.\n<\/p>\n
Judge Steven Evans said Vangu had planned the robbery and recruited others, including Akinrinola, to assist him.\n<\/p>\n
The judge said Akinrinola was \u201csubservient\u201d to Vangu but played \u201can essential part\u201d in the offences.<\/p>\n
The court heard that at least eight men were forced into a bedroom during the incident, where they were threatened with a large \u201czombie-style knife\u201d while their belongings were taken.\n<\/p>\n
After the party incident, some of the victims were allegedly taken to student accommodation in Bath Lane, Leicester, where further assaults occurred.\n<\/p>\n
The prosecution said Akinrinola forced some victims to perform physical exercises, including star jumps and high knees, before repeatedly punching them.\n<\/p>\n
Vangu was also accused of whipping victims with a belt, shooting them with a BB gun, waxing their faces and threatening to cut off their dreadlocks if they failed to pay him.\n<\/p>\n
The judge described the acts as \u201ctorture\u201d and humiliation, adding that Vangu showed a \u201ccomplete absence of empathy\u201d towards the victims.\n<\/p>\n
Vangu later posted videos from the incidents on TikTok, which were used as evidence during the trial. <\/p>\n
He was convicted of four counts of robbery, 10 counts of blackmail and one count of actual bodily harm.<\/p>\n
Akinrinola was convicted of nine counts of blackmail, four counts of robbery and two counts of actual bodily harm, while he was acquitted of one count of blackmail.\n<\/p>\n
Two other men arrested in connection with the incident, Benjamin Osadolor, 19, of Northampton, and Ayomide Ibraheem, 19, of London, were found not guilty of all charges.\n<\/p>\n
PUNCH Online had earlier reported that Akinrinola\u2019s parents appealed to British authorities to review their son\u2019s conviction, insisting that he was wrongly convicted and was not involved in the offences.\n<\/p>\n
In a statement issued before sentencing, Aderinkola Akinrinola and Olayinka Akinrinola argued that their son\u2019s conviction was based largely on circumstantial evidence and his association with Vangu.\n<\/p>\n
They said their son only met Vangu after gaining admission into Leicester University in September 2025 and described them as acquaintances.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cOur son is innocent of the charges against him. The police argument against him is that he is guilty by association with the prime suspect,\u201d the parents said.\n<\/p>\n
They claimed Akinrinola attended the party but did not participate in the robbery or benefit from any proceeds.<\/p>\n
According to them, some victims testified during the trial that their son was not among those who robbed them.\n<\/p>\n
The family also claimed that no stolen items were recovered from his residence and that investigators found no evidence of money transfers from victims into his accounts.\n<\/p>\n
They further alleged that CCTV footage only showed him arriving at the party venue and did not place him at the scene of the robbery.\n<\/p>\n
The parents said their son voluntarily contacted the police after seeing videos linking him to the incident and appealed for a review of the case.\n<\/p>\n
However, following the trial, the court convicted Akinrinola and sentenced him alongside Vangu for their roles in the offences.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 19-year-old Nigerian student in the United Kingdom, Oluwatobiloba Akinrinola, and another man have been jailed for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[237085,924,59,57,58,66667,237086,50,169828,237087,237088,211316,21783,56,117883,54,55],"class_list":["post-716147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-blackmail","tag-crime","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-jail","tag-leicester-crown-court","tag-news","tag-nigerian-diaspora","tag-nigerian-student","tag-oluwatobiloba-akinrinola","tag-punch-newspaper","tag-robbery","tag-uk","tag-uk-crime","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}