Former USCIS official allegedly fast-tracked citizenship cases
Ex-USCIS official Lukman Owolabi Ganiyu and his alleged financial accomplice, Adeniyi Akeem Somoye, have been charged over a scheme in which they allegedly accepted nearly $960,000 to manipulate and speed up immigration benefit applications, including citizenship cases. Prosecutors allege the scheme operated from December 2019 through March 2026 and involved applicants paying money in exchange for special treatment. The allegations cover a period of more than six years, from December 2019 until March 2026.
As per a Fox News report, the two men were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy to receive illegal gratuities by a public official, according to the U.S. Investigators found thousands of WhatsApp messages and hundreds of calls between Ganiyu, Somoye and people whose immigration applications they handled, according to prosecutors. Ganiyu used his position at USCIS to bypass normal procedures for applicants who paid bribes, according to the allegations. Most of the citizenship applications handled by the pair involved applicants from African countries, according to prosecutors. Ganiyu resigned from USCIS in March, citing “personal reasons,” according to the report.
Thousands of WhatsApp messages and hundreds of phone calls helped investigators uncover an alleged bribery scheme involving a former senior U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) official, prosecutors say. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. A key part of the investigation was the pair’s digital communication with applicants. Prosecutors say some applications were moved forward without key steps such as criminal background checks, interviews, standard USCIS processing procedures and other reviews. He was arrested several months later.