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By John Ogunsemore
A Nigerian man, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison by a court in the United States for participating in an inheritance scam that defrauded 400 Americans of $6 million.
Nnebocha, 44, was sentenced five months after he was extradited from Poland to face US federal charges of engaging in a transnational criminal organisation that operated an inheritance fraud scheme that cheated many elderly and vulnerable Americans out of their savings.
Polish authorities arrested Nnebocha in April 2025 based on an indictment filed by the US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida.
He was extradited to the US in September 2025, when he made his initial court appearance.
According to court documents, Nnebocha and his co-conspirators operated a lucrative transnational inheritance fraud scheme that exploited vulnerable people in the United States.
The court heard how 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 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 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.
In November 2025, Nnebocha pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.
He was sentenced on Friday.
At sentencing, Nnebocha was sentenced to 97 months in prison, 3 years supervised release, and ordered to pay more than $6.8 million in restitution to the victims of his scheme.
This is the second indicted case related to this international fraud scheme.
Eight co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria have previously been convicted and sentenced in connection with this scheme.
