Roger Ver Arrested In Spain, Charged With $48M Tax Fraud

Key Points:

• Roger Ver, “Bitcoin Jesus”, was arrested for tax evasion.
• He allegedly underreported his Bitcoin holdings.
• Ver failed to fulfill his legal tax obligations despite renouncing U.S. citizenship.

Roger Ver arrested in Spain for tax evasion. Accused of causing a $48 million loss to the IRS, Ver allegedly hid his personal and business bitcoin holdings.

Roger Ver, a prominent early Bitcoin investor, was arrested in Spain following the unsealing of an indictment charging him with mail fraud, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns.

Known as “Bitcoin Jesus” and a vocal supporter of Bitcoin Cash, Ver is accused of causing a minimum loss of $48 million to the IRS.

Roger Ver Arrested: Accusations of Mail Fraud, Tax Evasion

Ver, originally from Santa Clara, California, was the owner of MemoryDealers.com Inc. and Agilestar.com Inc., two companies selling computer and networking equipment. From 2011, Ver started acquiring bitcoins for personal use and his businesses.

In 2014, he obtained citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis, consequently renouncing his U.S. citizenship. This process, known as expatriation, necessitated him to file tax returns reporting capital gains from his global assets, including bitcoins, and to pay an exit tax on those gains.

Ver allegedly gave false information to his hired law firm and appraiser, hiding the actual number of bitcoins he and his companies owned. Consequently, his tax returns significantly undervalued the companies and their 73,000 bitcoins and failed to report his personal bitcoin holdings.

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Concealment and Tax Evasion: Roger Ver’s Alleged Misdeeds

By June 2017, Ver’s companies still owned around 70,000 bitcoins. Around this time, Ver allegedly took control of these bitcoins and sold a large portion on cryptocurrency exchanges for about $240 million in cash.

Despite not being a U.S. citizen, he was still legally obligated to report and pay tax on certain distributions such as dividends from his U.S. corporations.

Ver allegedly concealed the sale of his companies’ bitcoins from his accountant, resulting in no reported gain or tax payment related to these bitcoins on his 2017 individual income tax return.