A United States court has sentenced a Nigerian national, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, to 97 months (over eight years) in prison for his role in a transnational inheritance fraud scheme that targeted elderly and vulnerable Americans.
Dip Connect Online News reports that the sentence was announced in a statement released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday. The DOJ said Nnebocha participated in a years-long conspiracy that defrauded victims across the United States.
According to the statement, Nnebocha, 44, and his co-conspirators operated the scheme for more than seven years, sending hundreds of thousands of personalised letters to elderly individuals. The letters falsely claimed to be from a bank representative in Spain and alleged that recipients were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives.
Victims were subsequently instructed to pay various fees, including delivery charges, taxes and other costs, before they could access the fictitious inheritance. The DOJ said the scheme ultimately defrauded more than 400 victims of over $6 million.
The statement disclosed that Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and extradited to the United States in September 2025. He later pleaded guilty in November 2025 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.
At sentencing, the court ordered him to serve 97 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and to pay restitution exceeding $6.8 million to victims.
The DOJ noted that this is the second indicted case linked to the international fraud scheme, adding that eight co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal and Nigeria had previously been convicted and sentenced.
Investigations were carried out by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with support from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’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.
The case is being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney Phil Toomajian and Trial Attorney Joshua D. Rothman of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section.
ADEOLA KUNLE
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