A 50-year-old Nigerian national, Amos Prince Okey Ezemma, was sentenced to 85 months imprisonment in the United States for his role in a transnational inheritance fraud scheme.
With the sentencing on Monday, July 22, 2024, each of the six Nigerian defendants connected with this matter has been sentenced.
According to court documents, Ezemma was a member of a group of fraudsters that sent personalized letters to elderly victims 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 for the recipient by a family member who had died years before in Portugal.
The victims were told that before they could receive their purported inheritance, they were required to send money for delivery fees and taxes and were instructed to make other payments. Victims sent money to the defendants through a complex web of U.S-based former victims.
The defendant and his co-conspirators also convinced former victims to receive money from new victims and then forward the fraud proceeds to others.
“The Justice Department’s Consumer Protection Branch will continue to pursue, prosecute and bring to justice transnational criminals responsible for defrauding U.S. consumers, wherever they are located,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
