Ex-USCIS Officer Charged in $960,000 Scheme That Fast-Tracked Citizenship and Skipped Background Checks

Federal prosecutors in Dallas charged a former senior U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer and an alleged moneyman with conspiracy to take illegal gratuities after a six-year run they say put a price tag on lawful status. Lukman Owolabi Ganiyu, a former Senior Immigration Services Officer, and Adeniyi Akeem Somoye were arrested Sept. 2 on a criminal complaint filed Aug. 31 in the Northern District of Texas. Acting U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould announced the case Friday.

“Selling immigration benefits for cash is a blatant abuse of public trust,” Raybould said. “When a federal official puts a price tag on lawful status, we will intervene immediately.” Each man faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Both are presumed innocent.

The complaint covers December 2019 through March 2026. Prosecutors say Ganiyu used his official seat to approve and rush four categories of filings — Form I-130 petitions for alien relatives, Form I-485 green-card applications, Form I-751 petitions to remove conditions on residence, and Form N-400 naturalization applications — in exchange for money. Investigators say he skipped criminal background checks, interviews, and ordinary USCIS review, altered the internal system to move files, and pulled cases out of the Minneapolis, Charlotte, and Houston field offices so local supervisors never saw them.

The money was not subtle. Prosecutors allege Ganiyu took about $671,438 from applicants over Zelle and Cash App and another $287,830 in cash deposits structured to hide the source — nearly $960,000 in all. Somoye, they say, processed roughly $1.7 million in transfers through bank accounts, Zelle, and Cash App, deposited $449,010 in cash, and kept a cut. Ganiyu’s government salary was $67,732 a year. Somoye’s reported legitimate wages were $7,506. The pair also allegedly fast-tracked Somoye’s own citizenship, then approved residency filings for Somoye’s wife and child.

The trail was on their phones. Investigators recovered thousands of WhatsApp messages and hundreds of calls among Ganiyu, Somoye, and the applicants whose cases they touched. Most of the citizenship files involved applicants from African countries, prosecutors said. USCIS Office of Investigations, the DHS inspector general, and the FBI’s Dallas Field Office built the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham of the fraud section is prosecuting it.

Ganiyu resigned from USCIS in March, citing “personal reasons,” several months before the arrest. That is how these cases usually end on the personnel side: a quiet departure, then a complaint, then handcuffs. What the complaint alleges is more serious than a sloppy officer. If the government proves it, a man with the keys to the naturalization system sold American citizenship while the same agency was telling the country the process was secure.

The charging decision lands in the same week the administration is in court over the SAVE citizenship-check tool and in the field serving voter-record subpoenas. Those are separate matters. This one is simpler. A federal officer is accused of putting green cards and oaths up for sale. Raybould’s office will have to prove it. The country is entitled to know how many files moved, who received them, and whether any of those names later appeared on a voter roll.