The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil complaint seeking to revoke the citizenship of a Nigerian, Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, over his role in a large-scale identity theft and tax fraud scheme.

According to a press release issued by the department on Thursday, Kazeem orchestrated a massive identity theft and tax fraud scheme that targeted over 259,000 victims and attempted to steal more than $91 million from the US Internal Revenue Service.

The complaint, filed on Wednesday in the US District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, seeks to revoke Kazeem’s American citizenship, which the government alleges he obtained through fraud and concealment of his crimes.

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

He served only six years before then-President Joe Biden commuted his sentence in December 2024 alongside nearly 1,500 others who had been serving under house arrest following early prison releases during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The DOJ’s Civil Division Assistant Attorney General, Brett Shumate, said the Trump administration would not allow wrongdoers to retain citizenship they were never entitled to.

“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.”

According to the press release, the denaturalisation complaint alleges that Kazeem’s fraudulent activities which were carried out both before and after his naturalisation, disqualified him from lawfully obtaining citizenship.

The complaint further alleges that he had earlier entered a sham marriage to secure permanent resident status before marrying a second woman, a conduct that independently disqualified him from naturalisation.

The fraud scheme came to light in May 2013 when, according to the DOJ, “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.”

An IRS investigation led to search warrants executed at residences in Illinois, Maryland, and Georgia, as well as numerous email and instant messenger accounts used by Kazeem and his co-conspirators.

The press release stated that agents seized “approximately 150 prepaid debit cards and $50,000 in money orders” at a Chicago property, and more than 50 electronic devices, 40 money orders exceeding $29,000, $14,000 in cash, and prepaid debit cards containing over $12,000 in fraudulent tax refunds at properties in Maryland and Georgia.

The search warrants, according to the DOJ, “helped agents identify Kazeem as the leader and mastermind of the scheme.”

Investigators found that the scheme resulted in the conspirators possessing stolen personal identifying information of more than 259,000 victims.

The DOJ said Kazeem “purchased more than 91,000 identities from a Vietnamese hacker that originated from an Oregon company’s private database”, a firm that provided pre-employment and volunteer background checks for thousands of clients.

Kazeem divided the stolen identities into batches and distributed them to co-conspirators, including his younger brother, Michael Oluwasegun Kazeem.

The press release said Kazeem “trained and directed his co-conspirators…to use stolen PII to obtain thousands of electronic filing PINs to bypass IRS authentication procedures.”

They acquired over 19,500 electronic filing PINs and gained unauthorised access to thousands of taxpayers’ financial transcripts during the course of the conspiracy.

In total, Kazeem was linked to 10,139 fraudulent federal tax returns seeking over $91 million in refunds, of which more than $11.6 million was successfully obtained.

The DOJ said “at least 2,000 wire transfers totalling over $2.1 million dollars were sent to Nigeria,” with over 700 transfers worth more than $690,000 directly linked to Kazeem.

He used the proceeds to make a nearly $200,000 down payment on a newly constructed house and to purchase a $175,000 townhouse, both in Maryland.

His average monthly credit card payment between 2012 and 2015 exceeded $8,300.

He also reportedly attempted to invest the funds in the development of what the DOJ described as “a $6 million dollar, 4-star hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.”

One day before his arrest in May 2015, Kazeem transferred the townhouse to his sister in Nigeria for $10 and added her to the deed of his Maryland home for the same amount.

He was sentenced on 20 June 2018 and ordered to pay more than $12 million in restitution.

His criminal conviction followed a joint investigation by IRS Criminal Investigation, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the FBI. (Punch)

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