The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil complaint seeking to revoke the American 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 Monday, May 18, 2026, 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 bordering on mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit fraud. He 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 move, Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said the US government would continue targeting individuals who fraudulently obtained 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.
“US 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 alleged fraud activities began before and continued after his naturalisation, making him legally ineligible for citizenship.
The department also accused him of engaging 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 began 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 information.
Search warrants later executed in Illinois, Maryland and Georgia reportedly uncovered prepaid debit cards, money orders, electronic devices and cash linked 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 in refunds and successfully receiving over $11.6 million,” 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, four-star hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.”
The Justice Department further alleged that Kazeem transferred ownership interests in some US 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.
