A former senior U.S. immigration officer and an alleged financial associate have been arrested in Texas after federal prosecutors accused them of operating a yearslong scheme that exchanged money for immigration approvals, expedited decisions and access to benefits that ordinarily require interviews, background checks and multiple layers of review.
Published at 6:20 p.m. EDT
Lukman Owolabi Ganiyu, a former Senior Immigration Services Officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Adeniyi Akeem Somoye were arrested September 2, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. A criminal complaint filed August 31 charges both men with conspiracy to receive illegal gratuities by a public official.
The allegations have been widely summarized as the “selling” of green cards. The government’s account is broader. Prosecutors say Ganiyu used his federal position from December 2019 through March 2026 to manipulate or accelerate applications involving family sponsorship, permanent residence, removal of conditions on residence and naturalization. Some applicants allegedly were not eligible for the benefits they received.
The case is an accusation, not a finding of guilt. Neither man has been convicted, and every allegation must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt if the case proceeds to trial. The Justice Department’s public statement describes a criminal complaint rather than a grand jury indictment.
Those distinctions are legally important. They do not diminish the institutional stakes. If the allegations are true, the scheme did not merely help people move faster through a slow bureaucracy. It allegedly converted public authority into a private service, allowing money to influence decisions tied to lawful residence and citizenship.
What prosecutors say happened
Federal investigators allege that Ganiyu accepted payments in exchange for approving or expediting immigration applications. The forms identified by the Justice Department show the range of benefits at issue.
Form I-130 is used to establish a qualifying relationship between a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident and a foreign relative. Form I-485 is used by eligible applicants seeking lawful permanent residence while in the United States. Form I-751 asks the government to remove conditions from certain marriage-based permanent-resident status. Form N-400 is the application for naturalization.
These are not clerical documents with automatic outcomes. They can require identity verification, evidence review, interviews, security screening, criminal-background checks, assessment of family relationships and confirmation that an applicant meets statutory requirements.
According to the complaint as summarized by the Justice Department, Ganiyu allegedly bypassed required interviews, supervisory review, jurisdictional limits, background checks and ordinary USCIS protocols. Prosecutors further allege that payments from applicants corresponded with approvals issued by Ganiyu.
Somoye is accused of participating in the financial side of the arrangement. The Justice Department says the two men together collected hundreds of thousands of dollars. Reporting by the New York Post, citing prosecutors and the complaint, put the alleged total near $960,000 and described transfers through payment applications and cash transactions.
Consumerlite News has not independently authenticated every payment total reported outside the Justice Department’s public release. The federal announcement confirms hundreds of thousands of dollars, extensive communications and alleged links between payments and case outcomes. The more precise financial figures remain allegations drawn from investigative records and should be tested in court.
Thousands of messages became a map of the alleged scheme
Investigators say they identified extensive WhatsApp communications involving Ganiyu, Somoye and applicants whose immigration matters they allegedly handled. The record included thousands of messages and hundreds of calls during the charged period.
Digital communications can be powerful evidence because they may connect people, dates, payments and official actions. A message discussing a case can be compared with an electronic transfer and then matched against the time an approval was entered into a government system. Phone records can establish contact patterns even when the substance of a call is unavailable.
That does not make every message self-explanatory. Defense attorneys can challenge authorship, context, interpretation and whether a payment had a lawful purpose. Prosecutors still must demonstrate the required criminal intent and connect each defendant to the charged conspiracy.
The alleged duration, more than six years, raises a separate oversight question. If payments and unusual adjudication patterns persisted from late 2019 through early 2026, when did internal controls first detect something abnormal? The Justice Department has not publicly explained whether the investigation began with a complaint, a financial alert, a routine audit, an applicant’s disclosure or an anomaly in USCIS case data.
It has also not said how many applications are under review or how many immigration benefits may have been improperly granted.
Why the official title matters
Ganiyu has frequently been described in headlines as a “senior U.S. official.” His actual title, former Senior Immigration Services Officer, is more informative.
USCIS officers work inside the Department of Homeland Security’s legal-immigration system. They review applications and evidence, conduct interviews, apply immigration law and make or recommend decisions that can determine whether a person receives a green card or becomes a citizen.
The word “senior” does not necessarily mean Ganiyu was a political appointee, agency director or national policymaker. The Justice Department describes him as a former senior adjudicating officer with official authority over immigration cases. That access is precisely what makes the accusation serious.
Ganiyu reportedly resigned from USCIS in March 2026, at the end of the period identified in the complaint. The public release does not say that his departure resolved the alleged misconduct or that the agency knew the full scope of the accusations when he left.
Accurate titles matter in corruption reporting. Inflating a defendant’s rank can mislead the public about how high a scheme reached. Understating an adjudicator’s authority can obscure how much influence an individual employee may exercise over life-changing applications.
“Selling green cards” is a shorthand, not the formal charge
The headline phrase is understandable because lawful permanent-resident cards were among the alleged benefits. Yet prosecutors have not charged the defendants with physically manufacturing or selling counterfeit cards. The accusation is that government decisions and expedited processing were traded for money.
The formal count announced by the Justice Department is conspiracy to receive illegal gratuities by a public official. Each defendant faces up to five years in federal prison and a fine of as much as $250,000 if convicted.
Illegal-gratuity law and bribery law are related but not identical. Bribery generally requires proof of a corrupt exchange in which something of value is offered or accepted in return for an official act. An illegal gratuity can focus on a payment given for or because of an official act, without requiring prosecutors to prove the same advance bargain in every circumstance.
The precise theory will depend on the charging documents and any later indictment. News reports should not replace the announced charge with a more dramatic offense unless prosecutors formally bring it.
The current complaint is also not evidence by itself. A judge may use a complaint and supporting affidavit to evaluate whether probable cause exists, but trial guilt requires a much higher standard.
The applicants may face consequences of their own
The criminal case focuses on Ganiyu and Somoye, but the alleged approvals create difficult questions for applicants who received immigration benefits.
If an application was approved through fraud, false statements or an unlawful intervention, USCIS and the Justice Department may review whether the underlying status remains valid. The consequences could differ substantially based on what an applicant knew, whether the applicant personally paid money, whether the case was otherwise eligible and whether false information was submitted.
A person whose legitimate application was steered through an improper channel may not be situated the same way as someone who knowingly purchased an approval while ineligible. The public release does not provide enough detail to judge individual cases.
Naturalization decisions carry additional complexity. Federal law provides processes for denaturalization when citizenship was unlawfully procured or obtained through material concealment or misrepresentation. Such action requires its own legal process. It does not occur automatically because an officer who handled a case is accused of corruption.
Fairness requires case-by-case review. Sweeping assumptions could punish innocent applicants who followed instructions or did not know that an intermediary was allegedly paying an official.
The case tests USCIS safeguards
USCIS processing is built around records, identity checks, background screening, supervisory structures and limits on which office may decide a case. Prosecutors allege that Ganiyu circumvented several of those controls.
The allegation suggests that controls may have existed on paper without reliably preventing a trusted insider from bypassing them. A strong institutional response should examine more than one employee’s conduct. It should ask whether case-management systems flag officers who approve unusually high numbers of applications, repeatedly handle matters outside their jurisdiction, skip required interviews or generate decisions inconsistent with peer patterns.
Financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest controls also deserve scrutiny. The government has not publicly said whether Ganiyu’s alleged income was visible through deposits, payment applications or lifestyle indicators. Nor has it explained which internal auditing tools were available during the period.
Technology could help identify anomalies, but automated monitoring must be carefully designed. A high approval rate is not proof of corruption, and officers serving distinct populations may handle cases with different outcomes. Internal analytics should trigger review, not substitute a statistical score for evidence.
Whistleblower protections are equally important. Coworkers and supervisors must have a credible way to report pressure, irregular access, skipped steps or suspicious case assignments without fear of retaliation.
Public trust is the real institutional casualty
Immigration adjudication depends on a basic promise: applicants with similar facts should receive similar treatment under the law, regardless of wealth or connections.
An alleged cash-for-approval scheme attacks that promise from both directions. It can give ineligible applicants access to benefits while forcing honest applicants to wait through the ordinary process. It can also damage public confidence in legitimate green-card holders and naturalized citizens who complied with every requirement.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould called the alleged sale of immigration benefits “a blatant abuse of public trust” and said federal officials cannot put a price on lawful status. FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock said manipulating immigration decisions for personal gain undermines a process important to national security.
Those statements were issued by prosecutors announcing a case they intend to pursue. They should be understood as the government’s position, not neutral findings about guilt.
The investigation involved the USCIS Office of Investigations, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General and the FBI’s Dallas Field Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham of the Fraud Section is prosecuting the case.
What happens next
Ganiyu and Somoye made initial appearances before a U.S. magistrate judge on September 2. The next major legal steps could include detention proceedings, discovery, plea negotiations or presentation of evidence to a grand jury.
A grand jury could return an indictment containing the same charge, additional charges or no charge. The defendants will have opportunities to challenge evidence and the government’s account. Court filings may eventually reveal more about how investigators discovered the alleged scheme, the number of affected applications and the defendants’ responses.
USCIS also faces a parallel administrative task. It must identify potentially compromised cases without treating every applicant connected to the officer as guilty. It must determine whether approvals should be reopened, whether other employees or intermediaries were involved and whether process changes are necessary.
The allegations describe something more serious than queue-jumping. They describe the alleged conversion of sovereign authority into a private marketplace. Green cards and citizenship are not products an officer owns. The power to approve them belongs to the government and is bounded by law.
Whether prosecutors can prove their case remains unresolved. What has already been established is that two men were arrested, a former USCIS officer stands accused of abusing his position, and federal investigators believe years of messages, calls, payments and approvals reveal a system operating inside the official one.
The criminal process will decide individual guilt. The public-accountability process must answer the broader question: how could conduct of this alleged scale continue for so long, and what will prevent another trusted official from assigning a price to lawful status?
Reporting and interview disclosure
This article contains original analysis and synthesis by Karla Alvarado using the federal criminal complaint as summarized by the Justice Department, agency policy material and reporting from identified news organizations.
Sources
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Form I-130 information
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Form I-485 information
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Form I-751 information
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Form N-400 information
New York Post, report on the alleged payment totals and transaction methods