U.S. court has sentenced Tochukwu Albert Nnebocha to eight years in prison for swindling some Americans in a multimillion-dollar inheritance fraud.

U.S. Department of Justice in a statement on Friday announced the sentencing of Mr Nnebocha for his involvement in inheritance fraud scheme targeting elderly and vulnerable Americans.

Mr Nnebocha, 44, was arrested by authorities in Poland and extradited to the United States of America in September 2025 to face trial for defrauding over 400 U.S. victims of more than $6 million. 

Friday’s judgement will see Mr Nnebocha spend 97 months in prison, three years supervised release. He was also ordered to pay more than $6.8 million in restitution to the victims of his fraud. 

Citing court documents, the DoJ said Mr “Nnebocha 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.”

It added,  “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.”

Particularly, it dogged OCCRP’s expose on a Nigerian socialite and internet fraudster Nzube Henry Ikeji, who posed as Dubai heir to deceive a lovestruck Romanian woman into a relationship and defrauded her of millions of dollars using the name of Sheikh Hamdan Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Mr Nnebocha’s case followed another episode of Nigerians jailed abroad for involvement in crimes.