The United States Department of Justice has initiated fresh legal action against a Nigerian national, Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, seeking to revoke his American citizenship years after his conviction in a multi-million-dollar identity theft and tax fraud scheme.
In a civil complaint filed at a US District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, the government argued that Kazeem’s citizenship was fraudulently obtained and should be withdrawn.
The move comes despite Kazeem’s earlier release from prison, having served six years of a 15-year sentence before his term was commuted in December 2024 as part of a broader clemency granted to nearly 1,500 individuals.
According to the Justice Department, Kazeem was the “leader and mastermind of the scheme” that exploited personal data belonging to more than 259,000 victims and attempted to defraud the US Internal Revenue Service of over $91 million.
He had been convicted in 2017 on 19 counts, including mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy.
Announcing the new action, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said the government was determined to ensure that citizenship is not retained under false pretences.
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“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.”
Court filings allege that Kazeem’s criminal activities both preceded and continued after his naturalisation, making him ineligible for citizenship under US law.
He is also accused of entering into a sham marriage to secure permanent residency before contracting another marriage—grounds the government says independently disqualify him from naturalisation.
Investigators traced the origins of the scheme to May 2013, when “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.”
Subsequent searches across multiple US states uncovered cash, prepaid debit cards, and financial instruments linked to fraudulent tax refunds.
Authorities said Kazeem “purchased more than 91,000 identities from a Vietnamese hacker that originated from an Oregon company’s private database” and distributed the stolen data among accomplices, including his younger brother.
He further “trained and directed his co-conspirators…to use stolen PII to obtain thousands of electronic filing PINs to bypass IRS authentication procedures,” enabling the group to access sensitive taxpayer records.
In total, investigators linked him to 10,139 fraudulent tax returns, with more than $11.6 million successfully obtained from the scheme.
The Justice Department added that “at least 2,000 wire transfers totalling over $2.1 million dollars were sent to Nigeria,” with hundreds directly tied to Kazeem.
Proceeds from the fraud were allegedly used to fund luxury property purchases in Maryland and to support plans for “a $6 million dollar, 4-star hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.”
On the eve of his arrest in 2015, Kazeem reportedly moved assets out of reach, transferring property ownership to a relative for nominal sums.
He was eventually sentenced in June 2018 and ordered to pay over $12 million in restitution following a joint investigation involving the IRS, the FBI, and the US Department of Health and Human Services.
With the latest court action, US authorities are now seeking to strip him of citizenship entirely, marking a new phase in the government’s crackdown on naturalisation obtained through fraud.