Today, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it has filed and served a civil denaturalization complaint in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, against Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, a native of Nigeria who organized a vast conspiracy to steal identities and file fraudulent tax returns. In 2017, he was convicted of 19 counts of mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison. But in 2024, then-President Biden commuted his sentence after only six years.
“The Trump Administration will not permit wrongdoers to retain the U.S. citizenship that they were never entitled to in the first place,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “U.S. Citizenship is a privilege, and we will continue to ask courts to revoke a status that was obtained through fraud and deceit.”
The newly filed denaturalization complaint alleges that Kazeem’s fraud scheme, which he committed in the years before and after his naturalization, along with his concealment of his crimes, precluded him from obtaining his naturalization lawfully. The complaint also alleges that Kazeem had, prior to his fraud scheme, engaged in a sham marriage to obtain permanent resident status and then married a second woman, further disqualifying him from naturalization.
According to court documents and evidence presented at Kazeem’s criminal trial, in May 2013, 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 (PII) including social security numbers and dates of birth.
An IRS investigation led to search warrants of residences in Illinois, Maryland, and Georgia and to numerous email and instant messenger accounts used by Kazeem and other 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 in amounts exceeding $29,000, $14,000 in cash and numerous prepaid debit cards containing over $12,000 in fraudulent tax refunds. The search warrants helped agents identify Kazeem as the leader and mastermind of the scheme.
The scheme resulted in the conspirators possessing stolen PII of more than 259,000 victims. Kazeem purchased more than 91,000 identities from a Vietnamese hacker that originated from an Oregon company’s private database. The company provided pre-employment and volunteer background checks for thousands of clients. Kazeem divided the identities into batches and shared them with other co-conspirators. They were in turn used to file fraudulent tax returns between 2012 and 2015.
In carrying out the scheme, Kazeem trained and directed his co-conspirators including his younger brother, Michael Oluwasegun Kazeem, to use stolen PII to obtain thousands of electronic filing PINs to bypass IRS authentication procedures. They acquired over 19,500 E-File PINS during the course of the conspiracy. Kazeem also used taxpayers’ PII to gain unauthorized access into many taxpayers’ IRS transcripts, which contain sensitive personal financial information. Conspirators also used pre-paid debit cards with the victims’ stolen identities to receive direct electronic tax refund deposits from the IRS.
In total, Kazeem was linked to 10,139 fraudulent federal tax returns attempting to get over $91 million dollars in refunds and successfully receiving over $11.6 million dollars. Refunds were withdrawn from the debit cards and at least 2,000 wire transfers totaling over $2.1 million dollars were sent to Nigeria. Over 700 of those wire transfers, totaling more than $690,000, were directly linked to Kazeem.
Kazeem used the conspiracy windfall to place 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 during 2012 to 2015 was over $8,300. Kazeem also attempted to use his ill-gotten funds to develop a $6 million dollar, 4-star hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.
In May 2015, Kazeem transferred the townhouse to his sister in Nigeria for $10 and included her on the deed to his Maryland residence, also for $10. He was arrested one day later.
On June 20, 2018, Kazeem was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $12 million in restitution. However, on Dec. 12, 2024, then-President Joe Biden commuted Kazeem’s sentence, along with nearly 1,500 others who had been serving under house arrest following their release from prison due to conditions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kazeem’s criminal conviction resulted from a joint investigation by IRS-Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General and the FBI. Investigative support was provided by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration; the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; the U.S. Department of State; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (DHS HSI) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Kazeem’s criminal case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Byron Chatfield and Gavin Bruce for the District of Oregon. Kazeem’s denaturalization case was investigated by DHS HSI and will be litigated by the Affirmative Litigation Unit of the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation.
