High-tech entrepreneur Peter Adekeye's yearlong nightmare began after he dropped his wife off at the Vancouver International airport and headed downtown to The Wedgewood, a posh boutique hotel. Inside a tasteful boardroom adorned with gilt-framed mirrors, the US District Court for Northern California, San Jose division, had convened a special sitting to hear Adekeye's deposition as part of a massive antitrust action he had launched against his former employer, the computer giant Cisco Systems. An official court video camera recorded the proceedings on May 20, 2010—Adekeye affably answering questions in an elegant black suit accented with a pale blue shirt and a coral tie.

At 5:15pm, however, two plainclothes women—the shorter one brandishing a badge—and two uniformed police officers entered the room. Adekeye was confused, as were his two Wall Street lawyers and the special judicial master conducting the hearing. But the four lawyers for Cisco knew exactly what was going on.

"I'm from the RCMP," the taller woman said, "I'm sorry I have to interrupt your meeting here."

"Hello," Adekeye said.

"I'm looking for—are you a Mr. Peter Alfred-Adekeye?"

"Yes."

"How do you say your name?"

"Add-a-kay."

"Add-a-kay," she repeated.

The lawyers interjected—"this is off the record," "on the record."

"I just want to speak with you," the officer continued. "Mr. Adekeye, the reason I'm here..."

"Wait, we're conducting a deposition here," the special master said as decorum collapsed and the video was shut off.

The recording resumed at 5:40pm, the camera focused on an empty chair with the special master speaking. "The interruption makes it impossible to continue the deposition today and, in my opinion, tomorrow," he said. "So I think that this deposition will be suspended until further notice."

Meanwhile, Adekeye was being perp-walked through the swanky hotel lobby, paraded past its well-heeled and powerful patrons and into a waiting paddy wagon. With that, the former Cisco executive, a British citizen with a blemish-free record and a sterling resume, dropped down an Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole that would tie up a year of his life.

The judge who freed Adekeye a year later said the public would "blanche at the audacity" of the conduct of Cisco and US prosecutors, both of whom turned out to be involved in Adekeye's jailing and persecution.

The "crime"

A week after his arrest and imprisonment, Adekeye appeared before British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman, a six-year veteran of the province's highest trial bench. Adekeye was described as a "sinister" figure of uncertain citizenship on the run from 97 charges of illegal computer hacking that carried a penalty of almost half-a-millennium in prison.

Canadian prosecutors said that, according to US Homeland Security, Adekeye slipped in and out of the US surreptitiously—and they could match up the dates of the offenses with dates he had unlawfully entered the country over a two-year period.

They made it sound like the crime of the century; in fact, throughout the specified time, Adekeye was living in America on a valid visa. And the heinous crime was accessing Cisco's internal systems on several occasions with a Cisco employee's permission.

As he stood in court for his first appearance, Adekeye couldn't believe what he heard—his citizenship was disparaged, his achievements derided. Prosecutors portrayed him not as a successful computer executive and innovator but rather as a Nigerian scofflaw who was a serious flight risk with a checkered, fugitive's past.

Justice Silverman was told the Canadian government had invoked the emergency provisions of the Extradition Act to obtain the arrest warrant—this case was that important and urgent. The judge who had issued the warrant had heard a similarly misleading story about Adekeye, who has held British citizenship since 2004; US prosecutors claimed they didn't have time to file a full extradition request because Adekeye might flee the country.

The extradition documentation was mostly a pack of "innuendo, half truths, and complete falsehoods," as a judge would later find, but it was impossible for Adekeye to counter without obtaining documentation from Europe. He was denied bail and would remain in custody for 28 days while his lawyers mustered supporting material to refute the charges presented to the court. He was finally released only under strict bail conditions that forced him to surrender his passport and remain in Vancouver unless given permission to travel elsewhere in Canada.

By then, he understood only too well how he had been pursued by Cisco. The Canadian authorities, however, and the judges who issued the arrest warrant and denied Adekeye bail, remained in the dark. They were unaware Adekeye's alleged crimes were part of a bigger legal battle he was waging against the $7 billion computer firm.

As part of its response to his litigation, Cisco had accused Adekeye in a civil countersuit of using his former colleague's computer credentials to obtain services worth "more than $14,000." No one ever explained the "magic" of that number—whether it meant $15,000 or $1 million—even the judges couldn't figure it out.

Cisco had pushed for Adekeye's arrest, apparently as part of its litigation strategy to derail the damaging antitrust suit that Adekeye launched in December 2008. They allegedly wanted him kept in custody to pressure him into settling or withdrawing his suit; they succeeded in keeping him locked up for a month. Normally, on a case like this, a non-violent defendant without a criminal record who wasn't considered a flight risk would have been out on bail in a day.