U.S. Seeks to Revoke Citizenship of Nigerian Fraudster

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a civil complaint seeking to revoke the citizenship of Nigerian Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem due to his involvement in a large-scale identity theft tax fraud scheme that targeted 259,000 victims and attempted to steal $91 million from the U.S.

Internal Revenue Service. Kazeem was convicted in 2017 on 19 counts, including mail and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

His sentence was commuted by President Joe Biden in December 2024, alongside nearly 1,500 others, leading to his house arrest after an early release due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The complaint alleges that Kazeem obtained his citizenship through fraud and engaged in a sham marriage to secure permanent residency.

Investigations revealed he purchased 91,000 identities from a Vietnamese hacker and was linked to 10,139 fraudulent federal tax returns, successfully obtaining $11.6 million. Kazeem also transferred significant funds to Nigeria and attempted to invest in real estate.