A Nigerian national, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, has been sentenced to 97 months in prison by a United States court for his role in a long-running inheritance fraud scheme that defrauded elderly Americans.
According to a statement by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday, Feb. 6, the 44-year-old Nnebocha and his co-conspirators orchestrated a transnational scheme that exploited vulnerable individuals over a period of more than seven years.
Court documents revealed that Nnebocha and his associates sent hundreds of thousands of personalized letters to elderly Americans, falsely claiming to represent a bank in Spain and informing recipients that they were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives. Victims were then asked to pay various fees, including delivery costs and taxes, to access the fictitious funds.
The DOJ stated that the group defrauded over 400 victims in the United States, stealing more than $6 million in total. Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and extradited to the US in September 2025. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in November 2025.
In addition to his prison sentence, Nnebocha was ordered to pay restitution exceeding $6.8 million and to serve three years of supervised release following his imprisonment.
The DOJ noted that this was the second case linked to the international fraud network, with eight co-conspirators from the UK, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria having already been convicted and sentenced.
The investigation was carried out by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with support from the FBI Legal Attaché in Poland, INTERPOL, Polish authorities, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, and the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs.
Senior Trial Attorney Phil Toomajian and Trial Attorney Joshua D. Rothman of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section handled the prosecution.
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