US moves to revoke citizenship of Nigerian convicted in $11.6m fraud case

The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil complaint seeking to revoke the US citizenship of a Nigerian-born man, Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, convicted of masterminding a large-scale identity theft and tax fraud scheme that allegedly defrauded US authorities of millions of dollars.

In a statement published on its website on Monday, the department said the complaint was filed before the US District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, accusing Kazeem of unlawfully obtaining American citizenship through fraud and concealment of criminal conduct.

Kazeem was convicted in 2017 on 19 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit fraud, and was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.

His sentence was later commuted in 2024 by former US President Joe Biden after he had spent about six years in prison.

Announcing the action, Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said the administration would continue targeting individuals who fraudulently obtained US citizenship.

“The Trump Administration will not permit wrongdoers to retain the US citizenship that they were never entitled to in the first place,” Shumate said.

He added, “U.S. Citizenship is a privilege, and we will continue to ask courts to revoke a status that was obtained through fraud and deceit.”

According to the complaint, Kazeem’s fraud activities began before and continued after his naturalisation, which prosecutors argued made him legally ineligible for citizenship.

The department also alleged that Kazeem engaged in a sham marriage to obtain permanent resident status before later marrying another woman, an action authorities said further disqualified him from naturalisation.

Court documents showed the investigation started in 2013 after a victim in Medford, Oregon, informed the Internal Revenue Service that fake federal and state tax returns had been filed using her family’s personal identifying information.

Search warrants later executed in Illinois, Maryland and Georgia reportedly uncovered prepaid debit cards, money orders, electronic devices and cash tied to fraudulent tax refunds.

According to the Justice Department, the searches helped investigators identify Kazeem “as the leader and mastermind of the scheme.”

Authorities alleged that the syndicate possessed stolen personal identifying information belonging to more than 259,000 victims and that Kazeem purchased over 91,000 identities from a Vietnamese hacker who breached an Oregon company’s private database.

The department said Kazeem and his co-conspirators used the stolen identities to file fraudulent tax returns between 2012 and 2015, while also securing thousands of electronic filing PINs to bypass IRS security procedures.

“In total, Kazeem was linked to 10,139 fraudulent federal tax returns attempting to get over $91 million dollars in refunds and successfully receiving over $11.6 million dollars,” the statement said.

Authorities further alleged that more than 2,000 wire transfers valued at over $2.1m were sent to Nigeria, with over 700 transfers directly linked to Kazeem.

The statement added that Kazeem used proceeds from the scheme to make “a nearly $200,000 down payment on a newly constructed house” and also attempted to fund “a $6 million dollar, 4-star hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.”

The Justice Department said Kazeem transferred ownership interests in some U.S. properties to his sister in Nigeria for $10 shortly before his arrest in 2015.

It added that the case was jointly investigated by agencies including the FBI, IRS-Criminal Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, while the denaturalisation proceedings would now be handled by the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation.