A United States court has sentenced a Nigerian national, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, to more than eight years in prison for his role in a long-running inheritance fraud scheme that targeted elderly and vulnerable Americans.
In a statement released on Friday, the US Department of Justice said the 44-year-old participated in a transnational conspiracy that defrauded over 400 victims of more than $6 million.
According to court documents, Nnebocha and his accomplices operated the scheme for over seven years, sending hundreds of thousands of personalised letters to elderly individuals across the United States. The letters falsely claimed to be from representatives of a Spanish bank and informed recipients they were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives.
Victims were then instructed to pay various charges, including supposed delivery fees, taxes and processing costs, before they could access the fictitious funds.
“In total, the defendant and his co-conspirators defrauded over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million,” the department said.
Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and later extradited to the United States in September. He pleaded guilty in November 2025 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
The court sentenced him to 97 months’ imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay more than $6.8 million in restitution to victims.
The Justice Department noted that the case is the second prosecution connected to the international fraud ring, with eight other co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal and Nigeria already convicted and sentenced.
The investigation was led by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with support from the FBI’s Legal Attache in Poland, INTERPOL, Polish authorities and the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.
Senior Trial Attorney Phil Toomajian and Trial Attorney Joshua D. Rothman of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are handling the prosecution.
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