Trump Administration Moves To Strip Nigerian-Born Fraudster, Oluwatosin Of US Citizenship Over $91Million Scam
The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil case seeking to revoke the citizenship of Nigerian-born Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, described by prosecutors as the mastermind of a sprawling, multimillion-dollar tax fraud scheme that targeted hundreds of thousands of victims.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Justice Department said it had filed and served a civil denaturalization complaint against Kazeem in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, alleging that he fraudulently obtained American citizenship while concealing a long-running criminal enterprise.
Kazeem was previously convicted in 2017 on 19 counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit fraud-related offences. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but in December 2024, then-President Joe Biden commuted his sentence after he had served six years.
Announcing the latest legal action, Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said the U.S. government would not allow individuals who obtained citizenship through deceit to retain it. “U.S. citizenship is a privilege, and we will continue to ask courts to revoke a status that was obtained through fraud and deceit,” Shumate said.
According to the complaint, Kazeem’s criminal activities before and after naturalization, along with his alleged concealment of these crimes during the citizenship process, disqualified him from lawful citizenship. Prosecutors also allege that Kazeem entered a sham marriage to secure permanent residency and later married another woman, which independently invalidates his naturalisation eligibility.
The scheme first came to light in May 2013, when a victim in Medford, Oregon, reported false federal and state tax returns filed using her family’s personal information, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth. Investigations by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) led to coordinated searches across Illinois, Maryland, and Georgia, uncovering prepaid debit cards, money orders, electronic devices, and cash linked to the fraud network.
Authorities said Kazeem coordinated the operation, which exploited the stolen identities of more than 259,000 victims. He reportedly purchased over 91,000 identities from a Vietnamese hacker, obtained from an Oregon-based company’s private database used for employment and volunteer background checks. Kazeem divided the identities among co-conspirators, who filed fraudulent tax returns between 2012 and 2015.
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Prosecutors revealed that Kazeem trained members of the syndicate, including his younger brother, Michael Oluwasegun Kazeem, to generate electronic filing PINs that bypassed IRS security protocols. The group obtained over 19,500 E-File PINs, accessed taxpayers’ IRS transcripts without authorization, and used prepaid debit cards under stolen identities to collect fraudulent refunds.
In total, Kazeem was linked to 10,139 fraudulent tax filings, seeking over $91 million in refunds, of which $11.6 million was obtained. At least 2,000 wire transfers totaling $2.1 million were sent to Nigeria, with over 700 transfers amounting to $690,000 directly traced to Kazeem. The funds reportedly financed an extravagant lifestyle and real estate acquisitions, including a Maryland townhouse and a nearly $200,000 down payment on a newly built home. He also attempted to fund a $6 million hotel project in Lagos.
Kazeem transferred ownership of his Maryland townhouse to his sister in Nigeria for $10 in May 2015, just one day before his arrest. In June 2018, a U.S. court sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment and over $12 million in restitution.
The Justice Department emphasized that Kazeem’s conviction resulted from a multi-agency investigation, involving IRS-Criminal Investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, the FBI, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Departments of State and Homeland Security, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
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While the criminal case was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Byron Chatfield and Gavin Bruce in Oregon, the ongoing civil denaturalization case is being investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and will be prosecuted by the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation.
