Justice Department Files Case to Revoke U.S. Citizenship of Mastermind Behind Multimillion-Dollar Tax Fraud Scheme

USCIS assisted with the investigation and is supporting denaturalization case

BALTIMORE – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services helped investigate Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, a native of Nigeria recently named in a civil denaturalization complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Kazeem orchesrated a large-scale identity theft and tax fraud scheme. In 2017, he was convicted on 19 counts—including mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy—and later sentenced to 15 years in prison. President Biden commuted his sentence in 2024 after he had served only six years.

The denaturalization complaint alleges that Kazeem committed his fraud scheme before and after becoming a U.S. citizen and concealed his crimes, making his naturalization unlawful. It also claims that, before his fraud scheme, Kazeem entered a sham marriage to get permanent resident status and later married another woman, which further disqualifies him from citizenship.

According to court documents and evidence presented at Kazeem’s criminal trial, a victim in Medford, Oregon, notified the IRS in May 2013 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 in turn used them to file fraudulent tax returns between 2012 and 2015.

In carrying out the scheme, Kazeem trained and directed his co-conspirators 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 in refunds and successfully receiving over $11.6 million. Refunds were withdrawn from the debit cards and at least 2,000 wire transfers totaling over $2.1 million were sent to Nigeria. Over 700 of those wire transfers, totaling more than $690,000, were directly linked to Kazeem.

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, President Biden commuted Kazeem’s sentence, along with sentences of 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. Other agencies provided investigative support, including 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, and USCIS.

To report suspected immigration benefit fraud or abuse to USCIS, please use the USCIS Tip Form.