A United States court has sentenced Nigerian national Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, 44, to 97 months in prison for his role in a transnational inheritance fraud scheme that targeted elderly and vulnerable Americans.
According to a statement from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday, Nnebocha and his co-conspirators “operated a lucrative transnational inheritance fraud scheme that exploited vulnerable people in the United States” over a period exceeding seven years.
Court documents reveal that Nnebocha and his collaborators sent hundreds of thousands of personalized letters to elderly individuals in the US, falsely claiming they were representatives of a Spanish bank and that recipients were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives. Victims were then instructed to pay various fees—purportedly for delivery, taxes, or other costs—before accessing the fictitious funds.
“In total, the defendant and his co-conspirators defrauded over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million,” the DOJ said.
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 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 that this was the second indictment related to the international fraud scheme, with eight co-conspirators from the UK, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria having been previously convicted and sentenced.
The investigation was carried out by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from the FBI’s Legal Attache 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 prosecuted the case.