The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit to revoke the U.S. citizenship of Nigerian national Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem.

Kazeem was convicted in 2017 on 19 counts of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2018 and ordered to pay more than $12 million in restitution.

His sentence was later commuted, and he was released after serving about six years, following a decision by then-President Joe Biden in December 2024 as part of nearly 1,500 commutations for individuals released early due to COVID-19-related conditions.

The scheme, which ran between 2012 and 2015, involved stealing personal identifying information from more than 259,000 victims.

In May 2013, a victim in Medford, Oregon, reported to the Internal Revenue Service that false federal and Oregon state tax returns had been filed electronically using her and her husband’s personal details, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

An IRS investigation led to search warrants at residences in Illinois, Maryland, and Georgia, as well as multiple email and instant messaging accounts linked to Kazeem and his co-conspirators.

At a Chicago residence, agents seized approximately 150 prepaid debit cards and $50,000 in money orders.

In Maryland and Georgia, agents seized more than 50 electronic devices, 40 money orders exceeding $29,000, $14,000 in cash, and numerous prepaid debit cards containing over $12,000 in fraudulent tax refunds.

The searches identified Kazeem as the leader and mastermind of the scheme.

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

He divided the identities into batches and shared them with co-conspirators, who used them to file fraudulent tax returns.

Investigations showed that Kazeem trained and directed other co-conspirators, including his younger brother, Michael Oluwasegun Kazeem, to use stolen identities to obtain thousands of electronic filing PINs to bypass IRS authentication procedures.

Kazeem and his accomplices acquired over 19,500 E-File PINs during the conspiracy.

They used taxpayers’ identities to gain unauthorised access to IRS transcripts, while stolen prepaid debit cards received tax refunds.

In total, Kazeem was linked to 10,139 fraudulent federal tax returns attempting to obtain over $91 million in refunds and successfully receiving over $11.6 million.

Refunds were withdrawn from the debit cards, and at least 2,000 wire transfers totalling over $2.1 million were sent to Nigeria.

Over 700 of those transfers, amounting to more than $690,000, were directly linked to Kazeem.

Kazeem 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 attempted to use the funds to develop a $6 million four-star hotel in Lagos.

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

The complaint alleges that Kazeem’s fraud scheme, committed before and after his naturalisation, along with the concealment of his crimes, precluded him from obtaining citizenship lawfully.

It also alleges that Kazeem engaged in a sham marriage to obtain permanent resident status and later married a second woman, further disqualifying him from naturalisation.

The action aligns with renewed immigration enforcement under the Donald Trump administration, which has emphasized crackdowns and deportations against criminal migrants.