A United States federal court has sentenced a 44-year-old Nigerian, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, to more than eight years in prison for his role in an international inheritance scam that preyed on elderly and vulnerable Americans.
Details of the sentencing were released on Friday by the US Department of Justice, which said Nnebocha was part of a long-running fraud network that deceived hundreds of victims through false promises of multimillion-dollar inheritances.
Prosecutors said the scheme operated for over seven years and relied on sending large volumes of personalised letters to elderly people across the United States. The letters falsely claimed to be from officials representing a Spanish bank and informed recipients that a deceased relative had left them a substantial inheritance.
Victims were then persuaded to pay various charges including supposed taxes, transfer costs, and delivery fees before they could access the non-existent funds.
Authorities said the payments never led to any inheritance. Instead, the money was funneled to members of the criminal network.
Investigators estimate that more than 400 people were defrauded, with total losses exceeding $6 million.
Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and later extradited to the United States in September of the same year. He subsequently pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy charges involving mail and wire fraud.
At sentencing, the court handed him 97 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay over $6.8 million in restitution to the victims.
The Justice Department described the case as the second prosecution tied to the wider international fraud operation. Several other suspects connected to the scheme from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal and Nigeria have already been convicted and sentenced.
The investigation was carried out by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with support from the FBI’s legal office in Poland, INTERPOL, Polish authorities and multiple US justice agencies.
Federal prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Fraud Section are handling the case.
