THE United States government has initiated legal proceedings to revoke the citizenship of Nigerian-born Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem over his involvement in a large-scale tax fraud and identity theft scheme that cost US authorities millions of dollars.
The US Department of Justice made this known in a statement released on Monday, saying a civil case had been filed at the District Court in Baltimore, Maryland. The government accused Kazeem of getting American citizenship dishonestly by hiding criminal acts connected to the fraud scheme.
Kazeem was sentenced in 2017 after he was found guilty on 19 criminal charges, including wire fraud, mail fraud, identity theft, and conspiracy. The court handed him a 15-year jail term, but his sentence was reduced in 2024 by former US President Joe Biden after he spent around six years behind bars.
Reacting to the case, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said the US government would continue taking action against people who obtained citizenship illegally.
“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 court documents, investigators said Kazeem had already been carrying out fraudulent activities before becoming an American citizen and continued after his naturalisation, which prosecutors argued should have disqualified him from obtaining citizenship.
Authorities also claimed he arranged a fake marriage to secure permanent residency in the US before later marrying another woman, an issue they said further affected his eligibility for citizenship.
The investigation began in 2013 after a woman in Medford, Oregon, reported to the Internal Revenue Service that unknown persons had used her family’s details to submit fake tax returns.
Following the complaint, law enforcement agents carried out raids in Illinois, Maryland, and Georgia, where they recovered prepaid debit cards, electronic gadgets, money orders, and cash believed to be linked to the fraud network.
The Justice Department said evidence gathered during the investigation identified Kazeem as the leader and mastermind of the scheme.
Investigators alleged that the group had access to personal records belonging to more than 259,000 people. Authorities also said Kazeem bought over 91,000 stolen identities from a Vietnamese hacker who illegally gained access to a private company database in Oregon.
Prosecutors said the syndicate used the stolen information to submit fake tax refund applications between 2012 and 2015. The group was also accused of obtaining thousands of electronic filing PINs to beat IRS security checks.
“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.
Investigators further alleged that more than 2,000 money transfers worth over $2.1 million were traced to Nigeria, while more than 700 of those transactions were directly connected to Kazeem.
Authorities argued that part of the money was used to pay nearly $200,000 for a newly built house. He was also accused of attempting to sponsor “a $6 million dollar, 4-star hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.”
Besides, Kazeem was accused of transferring ownership of some properties in the US to his sister in Nigeria for only $10 shortly before he was arrested in 2015.
According to the Justice Department, the investigation involved the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security, while lawyers from the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation are now handling the citizenship revocation case.
Kazeem’s fresh travails followed the sentencing of a Nigerian professor, Nkechy Ezeh, by a US court to nearly six years in prison for masterminding a massive fraud scheme that diverted more than $1.4 million intended to help low-income preschool children in West Michigan.
Chief US District judge Hala Jarbou delivered the ruling and condemned the 61-year-old Founder of Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative, calling her a fraud and a thief.
The court ordered Ezeh to repay $1.4 million to fraud victims, an additional $390,174 to the Internal Revenue Service and be taken into custody immediately to begin serving her prison sentence.
Ezeh was once widely celebrated in Michigan’s education and nonprofit sectors for running a nonprofit organisation that provided preschool support services including meals, transportation, advocacy, and educational funding in underserved communities across Kent County, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek.