$91m Tax Fraud: US Justice Department Moves to Strip Nigerian of Citizenship

The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil complaint to revoke the American citizenship of Nigerian-born Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem.

NaijaChoice News reports that the case, lodged on Wednesday at the US District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, accuses Kazeem of obtaining his citizenship through fraud and hiding his crimes.

According to a DOJ press release issued Thursday, Kazeem masterminded an identity theft ring that hit more than 259,000 victims and attempted to snatch over $91 million from the US Internal Revenue Service.

He was convicted in 2017 on 19 counts including mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy. A federal judge in Oregon handed him 15 years in prison.

Kazeem served just six years before former President Joe Biden commuted his sentence in December 2024, along with nearly 1,500 others released early during the COVID-19 period.

The Trump administration is now pushing for denaturalisation. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate declared that wrongdoers will not keep citizenship they never deserved.

“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 stated.

Court papers claim Kazeem ran the scam both before and after becoming a US citizen. He also entered a sham marriage to gain permanent residency, then wed another woman – acts that alone barred naturalisation.

The scheme surfaced in May 2013 when an Oregon victim spotted fake tax returns filed in her name. IRS probes led to raids in Illinois, Maryland and Georgia.

Agents seized 150 prepaid debit cards, $50,000 in money orders in Chicago, plus devices, cash and more cards holding fraudulent refunds elsewhere.

Investigators traced Kazeem as the leader. He bought over 91,000 stolen identities from a Vietnamese hacker who breached an Oregon background-check firm’s database.

Kazeem split the data into batches, trained accomplices – including his younger brother Michael Oluwasegun Kazeem – and helped them bypass IRS checks with thousands of electronic filing PINs.

They filed 10,139 bogus federal returns seeking $91 million. Over $11.6 million was actually paid out.

At least $2.1 million moved through 2,000 wire transfers to Nigeria, with more than $690,000 tied directly to Kazeem.

He splashed the money on a nearly $200,000 down payment for a new Maryland house and a $175,000 townhouse. His credit card bills averaged over $8,300 monthly between 2012 and 2015.

Kazeem even tried to pump proceeds into a $6 million four-star hotel project in Lagos.

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

He was ordered to pay more than $12 million in restitution after sentencing in June 2018.

The case, built by IRS Criminal Investigation, the FBI and other agencies, now puts Kazeem’s US status at risk.

Many Nigerians in the diaspora have watched the development closely, as large sums from the scam flowed home and plans for investment targeted Lagos.