A federal court in the United States has handed down a prison sentence of more than eight years to a Nigerian citizen, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, for his involvement in an international inheritance fraud scheme that targeted elderly and vulnerable Americans.
According to a statement published on the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) website on Friday, “a Nigerian National was sentenced today to more than eight years in prison for participating in a years-long conspiracy to defraud elderly and vulnerable Americans through an inheritance fraud scheme.”
The DOJ said Nnebocha, 44, alongside other members of the syndicate, operated the scheme for more than seven years, characterising it as a complex international fraud ring that victimised individuals across the US.
The statement read, “According to court documents, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, 44, of Nigeria, and his co-conspirators operated a lucrative transnational inheritance fraud scheme that exploited vulnerable people in the United States.
“Over the course of more than seven years, Nnebocha and his co-conspirators sent hundreds of thousands of personalized letters to elderly individuals in the United States, falsely claiming that the sender was a representative of a bank in Spain and that the recipient was entitled to receive a multimillion-dollar inheritance left by a deceased family member.”
Victims were subsequently told they needed to make several payments before they could receive the supposed inheritance.
“The conspirators then told the victims that, before they could receive their purported inheritance, they were required to send money for purported delivery fees, taxes, and payments regarding the inheritance. In total, the defendant and his co-conspirators defrauded over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million,” the statement read.
The DOJ added that “in total, the defendant and his co-conspirators defrauded over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million.”
Authorities revealed that Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and later extradited to the United States in September 2025. He entered a guilty plea in November 2025 to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.
At the sentencing hearing, the court imposed a 97-month jail term, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay restitution exceeding $6.8 million to the victims.
The department said “this is the second indicted case related to this international fraud scheme,” noting that eight accomplices from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal and Nigeria have already been convicted and sentenced.
Investigations into the case were carried out by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Legal Attaché in Poland, INTERPOL, Polish law enforcement agencies, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, and the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs.
The DOJ stated that Senior Trial Attorney Phil Toomajian and Trial Attorney Joshua D. Rothman of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are handling the prosecution.
