The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced the extradition of a Nigerian national, Tochuwku Nnebocha, from Poland to face charges over a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme that targeted elderly Americans.
In a statement released Monday, the DOJ said Nnebocha, 43, appeared before a federal court in Miami, Florida, following his arrest by Polish authorities in April 2025 on an indictment filed in the Southern District of Florida. He had been in custody in Poland since his arrest.
According to court documents, Nnebocha allegedly led a transnational criminal organisation that operated an inheritance fraud scheme spanning more than five years. He and his accomplices are accused of sending personalised letters to elderly victims across the US, claiming they were heirs to multimillion-dollar estates from deceased relatives in Spain.
Victims were instructed to pay delivery fees, taxes, or other charges to secure their supposed inheritance and avoid scrutiny from authorities. However, “victims who sent money never received any of the purported inheritance funds,” the DOJ disclosed.
The payments, investigators said, were laundered through a network of US-based former fraud victims, who were manipulated into forwarding funds to Nnebocha and his associates.
Nnebocha now faces charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, as well as mail and wire fraud. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in federal prison. A federal district court judge will determine his sentence after reviewing the US Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Two of his co-conspirators, Okezie Bonaventure Ogbata (extradited from Portugal) and Ehis Lawrence Akhimie(extradited from the United Kingdom), have already pleaded guilty and were each sentenced to 97 months in prison for their roles in the scheme.
The DOJ described the case as part of its broader campaign to shield American seniors from fraud schemes, including romance fraud, lottery scams, tech support fraud, and grandparent scams.
“These confidence schemes exploit the vulnerability of seniors and often result in significant financial losses,” the statement noted.
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Senior Trial Attorney and Transnational Criminal Litigation Coordinator Phil Toomajian, alongside Trial Attorney Josh Rothman of the DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch, are leading the prosecution. The case also involved the DOJ’s Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, the FBI Legal Attaché in Poland, INTERPOL, and Polish authorities.
“This extradition underscores our commitment to holding perpetrators accountable, no matter where they operate, and to safeguarding seniors from fraudulent schemes that can devastate lives,” the DOJ said.
Nnebocha’s extradition came amid a wave of US crackdowns on international fraud rings. Recently, the DOJ confirmed that Chukwuemeka Amachukwu, a Nigerian man based in France, was extradited to New York to face charges of computer hacking, fraud, and identity theft.
