In his younger days, Omar was a successful cyber-athelete. As he aged, he found he could no longer keep up with young minds, particularly those with all the latest augmentations. He sunk into poverty, living off his meager savings in the poor neighborhood Tariq grew up in. The Fall came, and Omar ended up as a case on Luna. He found odd jobs as a vacworker, but despised his circumstances, and looked for any way out. He ended up being the target of a "get rich quick" scam that of course fell through, and ended up with him being indentured on Extropia.
On Extropia, he is put to work on long hours doing QA work for grey market Extropian knock-offs of popular hypercorp video games.