- The US Department of Justice has filed charges against Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin investor and advocate.
- Ver is accused of committing fraud and evading taxes, with the total amount involved estimated to be $48 million.
Recently, investor Roger Ver, who is widely known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” has faced charges laid out in an indictment published by the US Department of Justice. The charges against Ver include fraud and tax evasion amounting to $48 million.
Ver was reportedly arrested in Spain over the weekend of April 27 and 28, 2024. The US Department of Justice has stated its intention to extradite Ver for trial and sentencing.
The main accusation against Ver, commonly referred to as “Bitcoin Jesus,” is that he evaded taxes on capital gains made through Bitcoin investments. The indictment claims that Ver’s actions resulted in damages of $48 million to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Despite renouncing his American citizenship in 2014, Ver allegedly failed to file returns with the IRS regarding investments made prior to that time period, according to the indictment.
The US Department of Justice revealed that Ver and his companies owned a total of 131,000 BTC at a price of $871 per coin by that time. The indictment suggests that Ver hired a law firm to assist in concealing the true capital amount in his submitted documents.
In 2017, Ver sold a portion of his assets but did not report the profits from the sales to the IRS, resulting in financial harm to the agency. As of now, Ver has not publicly commented on this situation.
It is worth noting that this is not the first case that the IRS has pursued against participants in the cryptocurrency market. The IRS had previously demanded $24 billion from the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, though the amount was later reduced.