A 41-year-old Nigerian national, Ehis Lawrence Akhimie, has been sentenced to 97 months—equivalent to over eight years—in a United States federal prison for orchestrating a sophisticated transnational inheritance fraud scheme. The elaborate scam defrauded over 400 elderly Americans, stripping them of more than $6 million.
According to court documents released on September 16, Akhimie and his co-conspirators posed as officials of a Spanish financial institution. They sent carefully crafted, personalised letters to potential victims, falsely claiming the recipients were beneficiaries of multimillion-dollar inheritances supposedly left behind by deceased relatives overseas.
To secure these fictitious inheritances, victims were instructed to pay various upfront charges, including purported taxes, delivery fees, and administrative costs. Instead of receiving any funds, the victims’ payments were funnelled through a complex web of intermediaries. Disturbingly, many of those intermediaries were themselves past victims, manipulated and deceived into unknowingly facilitating the criminal enterprise.
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Akhimie becomes the eighth individual sentenced in connection with the inheritance fraud network. Earlier in April 2025, another Nigerian national, Okezie Bonaventure Ogbata, received an identical 97-month sentence for his role in the same scheme.
The long-running investigation was spearheaded by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with essential collaboration from international partners, including Europol and enforcement authorities in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Portugal.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Jason Quiñones strongly condemned the crime, emphasising that such scams “steal not only money but dignity from our seniors.” The case underscores the critical importance of global cooperation in tackling transnational financial crimes and safeguarding vulnerable populations.
