Ex-USCIS Officer Charged With Taking Nearly $960,000 in Bribes to Fast-Track Immigration Approvals

A federal complaint unsealed in the Northern District of Texas alleges a former senior USCIS official spent years selling access to the U.S. immigration system for cash, then let his own associate's family cut the line for green cards along the way.

Lukman Owolabi Ganiyu, who held the title of Senior Immigration Services Officer at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Dallas, and Adeniyi Akeem Somoye, identified as his financial intermediary, were arrested September 2, 2026, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas. A criminal complaint was filed against them August 31. Both face a single charge of conspiracy to receive illegal gratuities by a public official.

What Prosecutors Allege

According to the Justice Department, the scheme ran from December 2019 through March 2026. Ganiyu allegedly used his USCIS credentials to bypass mandatory interviews, supervisory review, jurisdictional limits and background checks to push through applications for people who paid him. Prosecutors say he reached into field offices in Minneapolis, Charlotte and Houston, applications outside his own jurisdiction, and approved them directly without local supervisors' knowledge, according to Fox News and the Times of India.

The benefits allegedly for sale included permanent residency, family-based petitions, naturalization and the removal of conditions on residency, CiberCuba reported. Geo News reported that most of the affected applications reportedly involved nationals from African countries.

Investigators say Ganiyu also used his position to help people close to him. Fox News and Geo News both reported that he fast-tracked Somoye's own citizenship application and approved residency for Somoye's wife and child, a detail that, if proven, would show the alleged scheme wasn't purely transactional but also served Ganiyu's own associate.

The Money

Court documents cited by the New York Post and repeated across multiple outlets show Ganiyu collected roughly $671,438 through Zelle and Cash App, plus another $287,830 in cash deposits prosecutors say were structured to disguise the money's origin, bringing his total to close to $960,000. That's against a reported USCIS salary of $67,732 a year, according to Breitbart.

Somoye is accused of acting as the financial pipeline, processing about $1.7 million in transfers and, on at least one occasion, depositing $449,010 in cash in a single transaction, according to Breitbart and Fox News. Investigators say Somoye's own reported legitimate income was a small fraction of that, around $7,506 a year.

The alleged evidence trail includes what prosecutors describe as thousands of WhatsApp messages and hundreds of phone calls between Ganiyu, Somoye and the applicants whose cases they handled, according to Border Hawk and the Times of India.

How It Unraveled

Geo News reported that USCIS received a tip in May 2025 that triggered the investigation, which was carried out jointly by USCIS's Office of Investigations, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General and the FBI's Dallas Field Office. Ganiyu reportedly resigned from USCIS in March 2026, citing personal reasons, the same month prosecutors say the scheme ended. He was not fired before he left, according to Breitbart, an accountability detail the other outlets in this roundup did not emphasize.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham of the Fraud Section is handling the prosecution, CiberCuba reported.

Officials' Statements

"Selling immigration benefits for cash is a blatant abuse of public trust," U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said in the Justice Department's announcement. "When a federal official puts a price tag on lawful status, we will intervene immediately. Public corruption will never be tolerated in the Northern District of Texas."

FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock said the alleged manipulation of immigration decisions "undermines the integrity of a process essential to our national security."

What Comes Next

Ganiyu and Somoye each face up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted, according to Border Hawk and Fox News. Both are presumed innocent, and the case remains a criminal complaint, not a conviction. No trial date has been announced.

Neither the Justice Department nor USCIS has said publicly how many applicants' cases were affected, or what will happen to the immigration status of people whose green cards, naturalizations or residency approvals allegedly went through Ganiyu's illegal shortcut. If federal agents can show which specific files were manipulated, USCIS would then have to decide whether to reopen and re-adjudicate them, a process that could take years and affect people who may not have known their paperwork was compromised.