A Nigerian man named Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha has been sentenced to 97 months in jail by a US court for taking part in a cross-border inheritance fraud operation that targeted elderly and vulnerable Americans.
The US Department of Justice said in a statement on its website yesterday that “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 that Nnebocha, who is 44 years old, and his co-conspirators ran a profitable inheritance fraud scam that took advantage of weak people in the United States for more than seven years.
The statement said, “Court documents show that Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, 44, from Nigeria, and his co-conspirators ran a profitable transnational inheritance fraud scheme that took advantage of weak 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.”
The US DOJ said that after then, the victims were told to pay several fees before they could get to the fake inheritance.
“The people who planned the crime then told the victims that they had to send money for fake delivery fees, taxes, and payments about the inheritance before they could get their fake inheritance.” The statement said, “The defendant and his co-conspirators cheated more than 400 U.S. victims out of more than $6 million.”
The DOJ also said that “the defendant and his co-conspirators defrauded more than 400 victims in the U.S. of more than $6 million.”
The statement said that Nnebocha was detained in Poland in April 2025 and sent back to the US in September 2025.
In November 2025, he admitted to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.
The court sentenced the defendant to 97 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and more than $6.8 million in restitution to the victims.
The government said that “this is the second indicted case related to this international fraud scheme.” They also said that eight other people from the UK, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria had already been found guilty and jailed.
The US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations looked into the case, with help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 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.
The statement says that Senior Trial Attorney Phil Toomajian and Trial Attorney Joshua D. Rothman from the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are in charge of the case.
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