A United States court has sentenced a Nigerian national, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, to 97 months (over 8 years) in prison for his role in a transnational inheritance fraud scheme that defrauded elderly and vulnerable Americans of more than $6 million.
According to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the 44-year-old and his co-conspirators operated the lucrative scheme for over seven years, exploiting hundreds of victims.
“Over the course of more than seven years, Nnebocha and his co-conspirators sent hundreds of thousands of personalized letters to elderly individuals in the United States, falsely claiming that the sender was a representative of a bank in Spain and that the recipient was entitled to receive a multimillion-dollar inheritance left by a deceased family member,” the DOJ stated.
Victims were then instructed to pay various fees for "delivery fees, taxes, and payments regarding the inheritance" before they could access the non-existent funds. In total, the scheme defrauded over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million.
Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and extradited to the United States in September 2025. He pleaded guilty in November 2025 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.
At sentencing, the court ordered 97 months’ imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and restitution exceeding $6.8 million to the victims.
The DOJ noted this is the second indicted case related to this international fraud scheme, with eight co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria having been previously convicted and sentenced.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from the FBI’s Legal Attache in Poland, INTERPOL, Polish authorities, and the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs.
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