US court sends Nigerian to prison for multimillion-dollar scam

A Nigerian national, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, has been sentenced to 97 months in prison by a United States court for his role in a transnational inheritance fraud targeting elderly and vulnerable Americans.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) stated 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 44-year-old Nnebocha, together with his co-conspirators, “operated a lucrative transnational inheritance fraud scheme that exploited vulnerable people in the United States” over a period exceeding seven years, according to the DOJ.

“Over the course of more than seven years, Nnebocha and his co-conspirators sent hundreds of thousands of personalised letters to elderly individuals in the United States, falsely claiming that the sender represented a bank in Spain and that the recipient was entitled to receive a multimillion-dollar inheritance from a deceased relative,” the statement explained.

Victims were then instructed to pay various fees before they could access the non-existent 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 US victims of more than $6 million,” the DOJ added.

Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and extradited to the United States in September of the same year. He pleaded guilty in November 2025 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.

At sentencing, the court imposed 97 months’ imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and restitution exceeding $6.8 million to victims.

“This is the second indicted case related to this international fraud scheme,” the DOJ noted, adding that eight co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria had already been convicted and sentenced.

The investigation was conducted by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with support from the FBI 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.