The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit seeking to revoke the citizenship of a Nigerian national, Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, over his involvement in a large-scale identity theft and tax fraud operation.
In a statement released on Thursday, the department alleged that Kazeem masterminded an extensive fraud scheme that affected more than 259,000 victims and attempted to defraud the Internal Revenue Service of over $91 million.
The case, submitted on Wednesday at a US District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, aims to strip Kazeem of his American citizenship, which authorities claim was obtained through deception and concealment of criminal activities.
Kazeem was found guilty in 2017 on 19 charges, including mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
However, he served six years before his sentence was commuted in December 2024 by Joe Biden, along with nearly 1,500 others placed under house arrest after early prison releases during the COVID-19 period.
The Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ’s Civil Division, Brett Shumate, stated that the administration would not allow individuals to retain citizenship obtained unlawfully.
“The Trump Administration will not permit wrongdoers to retain the U.S. citizenship that they were never entitled to in the first place. U.S. Citizenship is a privilege, and we will continue to ask courts to revoke a status that was obtained through fraud and deceit.”
Authorities explained that the denaturalisation case is based on claims that Kazeem’s criminal conduct, both before and after obtaining citizenship, made him ineligible for naturalisation.
The complaint also accused him of entering into a fraudulent marriage to secure permanent residency before later marrying another woman, an act that independently disqualified him from citizenship.
The fraud was uncovered in May 2013 when, according to the department, “a victim in Medford, Oregon, notified the IRS that false federal and Oregon state tax returns were filed electronically using her and her husband’s personal identifying information.”
Investigations by federal agencies led to search warrants carried out at properties in Illinois, Maryland, and Georgia, as well as multiple email and messaging accounts linked to Kazeem and his associates.
Authorities reported seizing “approximately 150 prepaid debit cards and $50,000 in money orders” in Chicago, along with numerous electronic devices, additional money orders, cash, and debit cards containing fraudulent tax refunds in Maryland and Georgia.
According to investigators, these searches “helped agents identify Kazeem as the leader and mastermind of the scheme.”
Further findings revealed that Kazeem “purchased more than 91,000 identities from a Vietnamese hacker that originated from an Oregon company’s private database” and distributed them among his co-conspirators, including his younger brother.
He also “trained and directed his co-conspirators…to use stolen PII to obtain thousands of electronic filing PINs to bypass IRS authentication procedures.”
Through the scheme, the group obtained over 19,500 filing PINs and accessed thousands of taxpayer records.
In total, Kazeem was linked to over 10,000 fraudulent tax returns seeking more than $91 million, with over $11.6 million successfully obtained.
The DOJ further disclosed that “at least 2,000 wire transfers totalling over $2.1 million dollars were sent to Nigeria,” with a significant portion directly connected to him.
He allegedly used the proceeds to fund luxury property purchases in Maryland and attempted to invest in what was described as “a $6 million dollar, 4-star hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.”
Just before his arrest in May 2015, Kazeem reportedly transferred ownership of one property to his sister for a nominal fee and added her to another property’s ownership under similar terms.
He was eventually sentenced in June 2018 and ordered to pay more than $12 million in restitution following a joint investigation involving multiple US agencies.
