A United States federal court has sentenced Nigerian-national Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha to more than eight years in prison for his involvement in a long-running transnational inheritance fraud scheme that targeted elderly and vulnerable Americans.

According to a statement published on the US Department of Justice website 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 Department of Justice described Nnebocha, aged 44, and his accomplices as operators of a sophisticated international fraud network that victimized people across the United States for over seven years.

The statement read, “According to court documents, Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, 44, of Nigeria, and his co-conspirators operated a lucrative transnational inheritance fraud scheme that exploited vulnerable 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.”

Victims were then instructed to send multiple payments before they could supposedly access the 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 U.S. victims of more than $6 million,” the statement read.

The Department of Justice further stated that “in total, the defendant and his co-conspirators defrauded over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million.”

Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025 and extradited to the United States in September 2025.

He pleaded guilty in November 2025 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.

During sentencing, the court imposed a 97-month prison term, to be followed by three years of supervised release.

The court also ordered restitution of more than $6.8 million to the victims.

The Department of Justice noted that “this is the second indicted case related to this international fraud scheme.”

It added that eight co-conspirators from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Nigeria had already been convicted and sentenced in connection with the same scheme.

The investigation was led by the US Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations.

Support came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Legal Attaché 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.