Case details: "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver arrested for tax evasion and will be extradited to the United States

Editor | Cat Brother
On April 30, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a document stating that Roger Ver (Bitcoin Jesus) evaded nearly $50 million in taxes and was charged with mail fraud, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns. He was arrested in Spain last weekend, and the United States sought to extradite him to the United States for trial.
Roger Ver is an early evangelist of Bitcoin and an important supporter of BCH. He is also an early investor in Bitcoin startups such as Bitcoin.com, Blockchain.com, and CoinFLEX. However, in recent years, Roger Ver has frequently had financial disputes with companies such as Matrixport, CoinFLEX, and Genesis.
The following is the full text of the press release issued by the U.S. Department of Justice:
Original link:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/early-bitcoin-investor-charged-tax-fraud
Yesterday, an indictment was unsealed charging early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver with wire fraud, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns. Ver was arrested in Spain over the weekend on criminal charges filed in the United States. The United States will seek to extradite Ver to the United States to face trial.
According to the indictment, Ver, who once lived in Santa Clara, California, owned two companies, MemoryDealers.com Inc. and Agilestar.com Inc., which sold computer and networking equipment. Beginning in 2011, Ver allegedly purchased Bitcoin for himself and his companies. 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 thereafter through a process known as expatriation. After expatriation, Ver was allegedly required by U.S. law to file a tax return reporting capital gains from the constructive sale of his worldwide assets, including Bitcoin, and to report the fair market value of his assets. He also allegedly had to pay a tax known as an “exit tax” that taxed these capital gains. As of February 4, 2014, Ver and his companies allegedly owned approximately 131,000 Bitcoins, which were trading at approximately $871 each on several major exchanges. MemoryDealers and Agilestar allegedly owned approximately 73,000 of these Bitcoins.
Ver allegedly hired a law firm to assist him with the renunciation of his citizenship and prepare tax returns related thereto. Ver also hired an appraiser to value his two companies. Ver provided the law firm and the appraiser with false or misleading information that concealed the true amount of Bitcoin that he and his companies owned. As a result, the law firm allegedly prepared and submitted false tax returns that significantly undervalued the two companies and their 73,000 Bitcoins, and failed to report any Bitcoin that Ver personally owned.
The indictment further alleges that as of June 2017, Ver’s two companies still held approximately 70,000 bitcoins. Around that time, Ver allegedly took ownership of those bitcoins and sold tens of thousands of them on cryptocurrency exchanges in November 2017 for 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 IRS and pay taxes on certain distributions, such as dividends from MemoryDealers and Agilestar, which are U.S. companies. Ver allegedly concealed from his accountant the fact that he had received and sold the bitcoins from MemoryDealers and Agilestar that year. As a result, Ver’s 2017 individual income tax return did not report any gains or taxes related to the bitcoin distributions from MemoryDealers and Agilestar.
Ver is said to have cost the IRS at least $48 million.
The announcement was made by Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada for the Central District of California.
The IRS Criminal Investigation Division’s Cyber ​​Crimes Unit is investigating this case.
Assistant Director Matthew J. Kluge and Trial Attorney Peter J. Anthony of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, and Assistant U.S. Attorney James C. Hughes of the Central District of California are prosecuting this case.
An indictment is merely an accusation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Financial Disputes
Earlier, during the extreme market volatility that occurred after the Terra collapse in the first half of 2022, Roger Ver's margin trading account suffered heavy losses. CoinFLEX failed to liquidate Roger Ver's huge positions in a timely manner and was eventually forced to seek reorganization, triggering an ongoing dispute between Roger Ver and CoinFLEX CEO Mark Lamb over responsibility for the platform collapse.
On June 29, 2022, Mark Lamb tweeted, "Roger Ver owes CoinFLEX $47 million worth of USDC. We have a written contract requiring Roger Ver to personally guarantee any negative assets in his CoinFLEX account and replenish margin regularly. However, he violated this agreement and CoinFLEX has issued a default notice to Roger Ver." Roger Ver tweeted that his debt arrears were rumors, and retorted, "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 issued 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 the other party continued to interfere, making the restructuring impossible.
On January 25, 2023, a unit of then-bankrupt Genesis Global Capital filed a lawsuit against Roger Ver for failing to settle cryptocurrency options trades. According to the filing, GGC is seeking “monetary damages for defendant’s 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.”
The next day, Roger Ver responded to the incident on Reddit, saying that he had enough funds on hand to pay Genesis what he owed and was happy to pay. "However, our agreement requires Genesis to remain solvent because Genesis cannot ask its customers to play the game of 'front customer loses, back Genesis wins.'" He believes that Genesis began to lose solvency in June last year and expects Genesis to explain how to accurately evaluate some problematic projects, including the difference between customer collateral valuations and their own crypto assets.
On November 6, 2023, Roger Ver revealed that he sued Smart Vega Holding Limited, a subsidiary of Wu Jihan’s Matrixport, in August 2022 and claimed $8 million. He claimed that the other party froze his funds because he was responsible for the losses of CoinFLEX.
Matrixport said the move was the result of an investigation into trading irregularities. Matrixport said Roger Ver was a client of bitcom. The matter stemmed from the exchange's investigation into Mr. Ver's margin trading irregularities, finding that he had breached his contractual obligations and was required to pay a penalty due to margin call defaults.