RismadarVoice Reporters
February 7, 2026
A United States court has sentenced Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, a 44-year-old Nigerian national, to 97 months in prison for participating in a transnational inheritance fraud scheme that targeted elderly and vulnerable Americans.
According to a statement published on Friday by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), Nnebocha and his co-conspirators “operated a lucrative transnational inheritance fraud scheme that exploited vulnerable people in the United States” over a period exceeding seven years.
Court documents reveal that Nnebocha and his accomplices sent hundreds of thousands of personalized letters to elderly individuals, falsely claiming to represent a bank in Spain and asserting that recipients were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives. Victims were then instructed to pay various fees—including delivery charges, taxes, and other payments—before accessing the fictitious funds.
“In total, the defendant and his co-conspirators defrauded over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million,” the DOJ stated.
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 also ordered three years of supervised release and restitution exceeding $6.8 million to the victims.
The DOJ noted that this is the second indicted case related to the international fraud scheme, with eight co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria previously convicted and sentenced.
The investigation involved the US Postal Inspection Service, Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI’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. Senior Trial Attorney Phil Toomajian and Trial Attorney Joshua D. Rothman of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section prosecuted the case.
