The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has extradited Tochuwku Nnebocha, 43, from Poland to face federal charges for allegedly running a transnational criminal network that defrauded elderly Americans of millions of dollars.
According to the DOJ, Nnebocha was arrested by Polish authorities in April 2025 and remained in custody until his transfer to the US, where he made his first court appearance in Miami, Florida.
Court documents reveal that Nnebocha and his associates orchestrated a five-year inheritance fraud scheme. They sent personalised letters to elderly Americans, claiming the recipients were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives in Spain. To claim the supposed funds, victims were told to pay delivery charges, taxes, or other fees. Sadly, the promised inheritance never existed. Payments were instead funneled through a web of US-based intermediaries—many of them former victims who were manipulated into forwarding money to the fraudsters.
Nnebocha now faces several charges, including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, as well as mail and wire fraud. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. A federal district judge will determine his final sentence after considering statutory guidelines.
Two co-defendants, Okezie Bonaventure Ogbata (extradited from Portugal) and Ehis Lawrence Akhimie (extradited from the UK), have already pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 97 months in prison for their roles in the same scheme.
The DOJ stressed that the case is part of a wider effort to protect seniors from scams such as romance fraud, lottery scams, tech support fraud, and grandparent scams, noting that these schemes “exploit the vulnerability of seniors and often result in devastating financial losses.”
The investigation was carried out with the collaboration of the DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, the FBI’s Legal Attaché in Poland, INTERPOL, and Polish authorities. According to the DOJ, this extradition underscores their commitment to holding perpetrators accountable, no matter where they operate, and to safeguarding seniors from fraudulent schemes that can devastate lives.
This case follows another high-profile extradition earlier in the year, when Chukwuemeka Amachukwu, 39, was transferred from France to New York to face charges of computer hacking, fraud, and identity theft. Both cases reflect the US government’s intensifying crackdown on cross-border financial crimes targeting vulnerable groups worldwide.
