Nigerian was sentenced on Monday to 85 months in prison for his role in a transnational inheritance fraud scheme.
With today’s sentencing, each of the six defendants connected with this matter has been sentenced.
According to court documents, Amos Prince Okey Ezemma, 50, 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.
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.
The 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.
