Nigerian Man Sentenced to 8 Years in US Prison for $6M Inheritance Scam

Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha, a 44-year-old Nigerian national, has been sentenced to eight years in a US prison for his involvement in a transnational inheritance fraud scheme that defrauded vulnerable elderly Americans. Nnebocha and his co-conspirators operated a lucrative scheme that spanned over seven years, sending hundreds of thousands of fraudulent letters to elderly individuals in the US, falsely claiming they were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased family members in Spain.

The victims were then instructed to pay various fees to access their fictitious inheritances, resulting in a total fraud amounting to $6 million from 400 US victims. Nnebocha was arrested in Poland in April 2025, extradited to the US in September 2025, and pleaded guilty in November 2025 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

In addition to his prison sentence, he was ordered to pay over $6.8 million in restitution to the victims. This case was investigated by the US Postal Inspection Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.