Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver Arrested! IRS charges $48 million in tax evasion, seeks extradition to stand trial

This site (120btC.coM): The U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release on Tuesday stating that Roger Ver, known as the Bitcoin Jesus, was arrested in Spain last weekend for tax evasion. Nearly $50 million, charged with fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. In response, the United States sought his extradition to the United States to face trial.

Roger Ver is an early evangelist of Bitcoin and an important supporter of BCH. He is also an early investor in Bitcoin.com, Blockchain.com, CoinFLEX and other Bitcoin startups. However, in recent years, Roger Ver has frequently Financial disputes with Matrixport, CoinFLEX, Genesis and other companies.

Roger Ver owns 131,000 Bitcoins

According to the indictment, Roger Ver, who once lived in Santa Clara, California, owns Memory Dealers.com Inc. and Agilestar.com Inc. companies, which sell computers and networking equipment. And starting in 2011, Ver claimed that he and his company were buying Bitcoin. He also enthusiastically promoted Bitcoin, even earning the nickname "Bitcoin Jesus."

On February 4, 2014, Ver allegedly obtained citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis and renounced his U.S. citizenship shortly afterward in the process of emigrating abroad. After allegedly moving abroad, U.S. law required Ver to file tax returns, report capital gains from constructive sales of his assets worldwide, including Bitcoin, and report the fair market value of his assets.

In addition, he also needs to pay a tax called "exit tax". As of February 4, 2014, Ver and his company owned approximately 131,000 Bitcoins, which were priced at approximately $871 each on exchanges. Memory Dealers and Agilestar allegedly owned approximately 7.3% of these Bitcoins. Ten thousand.

Hiring a law firm and appraiser to lie about the amount of Bitcoin

Ver allegedly hired a law firm to help him renounce his citizenship and prepare related tax returns. At the same time, Ver also hired an appraiser to value his two companies.

However, Ver provided false or misleading information to the law firm and appraiser, concealing the number of Bitcoins owned by Ver and his company. As a result, the law firm filed false tax returns that grossly understated the value of the two companies and their 73,000 Bitcoins, and Ver’s personal Bitcoin holdings were not reported in the filings.

Sold tens of thousands of Bitcoins, cashed out $240 million

The indictment further alleged that as of June 2017, Ver's two companies still held approximately 70,000 Bitcoins. Around that time, Ver took ownership of the bitcoins and sold tens of thousands of them on cryptocurrency exchanges in November 2017, netting approximately $240 million in cash.

Although Ver was no longer a U.S. citizen at the time, he was still legally obligated to report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and pay taxes on certain distributions, such as dividends from two U.S. companies, Memory Dealers and Agilestar .

Ver allegedly concealed from his accountant the Bitcoin he received and sold from two companies that year. Therefore, Ver’s 2017 personal income tax return did not include any Bitcoin-related gains from his two companies. and taxes.

Ver is alleged to have cost the IRS at least $48 million, and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division's Cybercrime Team is investigating the case. Assistant Director Matthew J. Kluge and trial attorney Peter J. Anthony of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Tax Division, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney James C. Hughes of the Central District of California, are prosecuting the case.

However, the indictment is only an accusation and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Roger Ver’s financial dispute

• CoinFLEX

Amid market volatility following the 2022 Terra collapse, Roger Ver’s The margin trading account suffered serious losses, and the exchange platform CoinFLEX failed to liquidate Ver's huge position in time. It was eventually forced to seek restructuring, leading to an ongoing dispute between Roger Ver and CoinFLEX CEO Mark Lamb over the responsibility for the platform collapse.

On June 29, 2022, Mark Lamb tweeted: Roger Ver owes CoinFLEX USDC worth $47 million. We signed a written contract requiring Roger Ver to personally guarantee any negative equity in his CoinFLEX account and to regularly top up the margin. However, he breached this agreement and CoinFLEX has issued a breach notice to Roger Ver.

Roger Ver tweeted that the debt default was a rumor, and refuted: Not only do I not owe this counterparty any debt, but this counterparty owes me a large sum of money.

In January 2023, Mark Lamb released an open letter to Roger Ver and Blockchaincom CEO Peter Smith, stating that CoinFLEX had stopped withdrawals for 250 days and 98% of people voted in favor of CoinFLEX’s restructuring proposal, but was rejected. The other party continued to interfere, making the reorganization impossible.

• Genesis Global Capital

Separately, on January 25, 2023, a unit of the then-bankrupt Genesis Global Capital filed a lawsuit in court accusing RogerVer of failing to settle cryptocurrency options trades. According to the filing, GGC seeks “monetary damages for Defendants’ failure to settle cryptocurrency options trades expiring on December 30, 2022, in an amount to be determined at trial, but not less than $20.9 million.”

Roger Ver responded to the matter on Reddit the next day: He has enough funds on hand to pay Genesis the money he owes, and he is happy to pay.

“However, our agreement requires Genesis to remain solvent because Genesis cannot ask its customers to play a game where heads the customer loses and tails Genesis wins. He believes Genesis began to lose solvency last June and looks forward to Genesis explaining how to accurately assess some of the items in question, including the difference between valuations of customer collateral and their own crypto assets.

Matrixport
On November 6, 2023, Roger Ver revealed that he sued Wu Jihan’s Matrixport subsidiary in August 2022 company Smart Vega Holding Limited, and claimed $8 million. He claimed that the other party froze his funds because he was responsible for CoinFLEX’s losses.

Matrixport said the move was an investigation into trading irregularities. Result. Matrixport stated that Roger Ver was a customer of bitcom. The matter stemmed from the exchange’s investigation of margin trading violations and found that he violated his contractual obligations and was required to pay a penalty due to a margin call breach.

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