A former senior U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official and his accomplice were arrested on Wednesday and charged in an alleged bribery scheme that prosecutors say warped immigration benefit applications for money. Lukman Owolabi Ganiyu and Adeniyi Akeem Somoye are accused of using Ganiyu’s position to push cases through the system, including citizenship applications.
The case matters because prosecutors say the pair took nearly $960,000 in illegal gratuities and used the cash to bypass the ordinary checks that decide who can move forward and who cannot. They allege that standard procedures were skipped for applicants who paid Ganiyu directly, including criminal background checks, interviews, normal USCIS processing protocols and other reviews.
Investigators said they found extensive WhatsApp messages between Ganiyu, Somoye and numerous applicants whose cases they handled. Prosecutors said the alleged scheme ran from December 2019 through March 2026, but they did not say in public filings how it was first uncovered. That gap matters because the record shows how long the operation lasted, not how the net closed around it.
Ganiyu is accused of altering the USCIS system to fast-track applications in exchange for money, then rerouting applications from USCIS field offices in Minneapolis, Charlotte and Houston so he could approve them himself. Prosecutors also said he fast-tracked citizenship for Somoye before approving residency applications for Somoye’s wife and child, a detail that underscores how the alleged favor-trading moved from strangers’ files to Somoye’s own family.
Court documents cited by the New York Post said Ganiyu received about $671,438 from citizenship applicants through Zelle and Cash App, then took another $287,830 in cash deposits that prosecutors said were meant to hide the source of the money. Somoye, meanwhile, is said to have processed roughly $1.7 million in transfers involving applicants through bank accounts, Zelle and Cash App, and to have kept a portion of those payments. He also allegedly deposited $449,010 in cash.
The charges place a former immigration official at the center of a bribery case that prosecutors say touched both citizenship and residency applications, a sign that the alleged conduct reached deeper than one office or one file. The unresolved question is how the scheme was exposed after years of alleged communications and payments, and whether the federal case will widen beyond the two men already charged.
The case lands amid broader immigration-fraud enforcement efforts, and it now turns on the evidence prosecutors say they have already gathered: the messages, the transfers, the rerouted files and the skipped reviews. Madueke cleared of six bribery charges after five-month UK trial is one reminder that bribery cases can hinge on what investigators can prove, not just what they allege.
