The investor, who was a Satoshi Bitcoin investor in the Satoshi Era, received two years of prison for underreporting his capital gains. He sold $3.7 Million worth BTC. The first criminal prosecution in the United States based solely on crypto currency has concluded.
Frank Richard Ahlgren, III purchased Bitcoins in 2011, which was the year that Satoshi Nakamoto last made contact. Ahlgren sold the funds from 2017 until 2019 at a total of $4.35million, while lying to his accountant about this amount and on his tax returns. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s calculations, Ahlgren has a total tax loss of over $1,000,000. A Texas man used his crypto fortunes to buy a home.
Tax fraudsters are sentenced for two years behind bars, one year of supervised release and $1,095,031 restitution.
“[He] earned millions buying and selling Bitcoin,” Stuart M. Goldberg is the acting Deputy Assistant attorney General for Justice Department’s Tax Division. “He lied to his accountant about the extent of a large portion of his gains, and sought to conceal another chunk of his profits through sophisticated techniques designed to obscure his transactions.”
Namely, the Texas man attempted to hide how much he’d made from the investment by exchanging Bitcoin for cash in-person, passing funds through a number of wallets, and using crypto mixers—protocols that attempt to obfuscate the sender and receiver of assets. The Texas man artificially inflated the price at the time he bought Bitcoins to lower the tax amount he was owed.
“Ahlgren will serve time because he believed his cryptocurrency transactions were untraceable.” Lucy Tan, acting Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation Houston Field Office said. “This case demonstrates that no one is above the law. My team at IRS Criminal Investigation has the expertise and tools to track financial activity, whether it involves dollars, pesos, or cryptocurrency.”
In 2011, a Texas resident bought Bitcoin, the same year Satoshi declared that he had moved on to something else. Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, hasn’t been seen in public since 2011, despite Bitcoin becoming the most popular invention ever. It remains the largest unsolved mystery in the crypto industry—although many have tried.
Stacy Elliott edited this article.