A Nigerian national, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, has been sentenced in the United States 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, February 6, Nnebocha, 44, “participated in a years-long conspiracy to defraud elderly and vulnerable Americans through an inheritance fraud scheme.”
The DOJ said Nnebocha and his co-conspirators ran a lucrative operation over more than seven years, sending hundreds of thousands of personalized letters to elderly individuals in the United States. The letters falsely claimed that the recipients were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives, with the senders posing as representatives of a bank in Spain.
Victims were then instructed to pay various fees, including supposed delivery charges, taxes, and other payments, before receiving their fictitious inheritances. In total, the scheme defrauded over 400 Americans 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 imposed 97 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered restitution exceeding $6.8 million to the victims.
The DOJ noted that this marks the second indictment related to the international fraud scheme, with eight co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria having already been convicted and sentenced.
The case was investigated by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with support from the FBI’s 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 prosecuted the case.
