$91m tax fraud: US to strip Nigerian convict of citizenship

A convict

The United States Department of Justice has filed a civil complaint seeking to revoke the citizenship of a Nigerian, Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, over his role in a large-scale identity theft and tax fraud scheme.

According to a press release issued by the department on Thursday, Kazeem orchestrated a massive identity theft and tax fraud scheme that targeted over 259,000 victims and attempted to steal more than $91 million from the US Internal Revenue Service.

The complaint, filed on Wednesday in the US District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, seeks to revoke Kazeem’s American citizenship, which the government alleges he obtained through fraud and concealment of his crimes.

Kazeem was convicted in 2017 on 19 counts of mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He served only six years before then-President Joe Biden commuted his sentence in December 2024 alongside nearly 1,500 others who had been serving under house arrest following early prison releases during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The DOJ’s Civil Division Assistant Attorney General, Brett Shumate, said the Trump administration would not allow wrongdoers to retain citizenship they were never entitled to.

“The Trump Administration will not permit wrongdoers to retain the U.S. citizenship that they were never entitled to in the first place. U.S. Citizenship is a privilege, and we will continue to ask courts to revoke a status that was obtained through fraud and deceit.” Punch