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Silicon Valley’s ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ fights $48 million IRS tax evasion case from Spanish island – The Mercury News



By David Voreacos and Olga Kharif | Bloomberg

To his followers, Roger Ver is known as Bitcoin Jesus, a charismatic advocate of the cryptocurrency that is once again captivating investors with record-breaking gains. But to the Internal Revenue Service, Ver symbolizes a new target in the digital age: a crypto holder suspected of failing to pay taxes after selling tokens.

US prosecutors charged Ver this year with evading more than $48 million in taxes for selling $240 million in tokens. It’s the most prominent case dealing solely with tax fraud and digital-asset sales, and marks a break from the tradition of prosecutors tacking tax charges onto crypto cases for crimes like money laundering, ransomware attacks and investor scams.

Ver, 45, is awaiting a Spanish judge’s decision on whether he must be extradited to America after his April arrest in Barcelona while attending a crypto conference. The US expatriate spent a month in jail before getting out on bail and moving to Mallorca, where he’s received a steady stream of visitors. An outspoken critic of the US government, he said he’s being persecuted by prosecutors.

“They don’t like me, and they don’t like my political views, and they just came at me every which way,” Ver told Bloomberg News in an exclusive interview in late October.

RELATED: 2 California men charged in $230 million cryptocurrency theft following FBI raid of Miami mansion

Ver said the Justice Department has ignored evidence that helps his defense and refutes a central premise by prosecutors – that he intended to cheat the IRS. Rather, he said, he relied on professionals who advised him when IRS policy on taxing crypto sales was unsettled.

“I instructed all my tax attorneys and preparers, ‘We need to do everything perfectly because I don’t want any problem with the IRS at all,”’ Ver said. “That was their instructions the whole time.”

A Justice Department representative declined to comment.

The seeds of Ver’s legal peril lay in his success as an early crypto investor — long before the latest Bitcoin rally fueled by Donald Trump’s US presidential win. They center on his representations to the IRS and the agency’s reconstruction of his holdings.

Ver grew up in Silicon Valley, founding a computer company called MemoryDealers at the precocious age of 19. He also engaged in tax protests and ran for California’s legislature at 21 as a libertarian.

In 2001, he pleaded guilty to dealing explosives without a license. (Ver says he simply sold firecrackers on eBay.) He served 10 months in prison, which hardened his attitude toward the US government. He left America in 2006, moving to Japan. He focused on building MemoryDealers and another firm, Agilestar, which sold optical transceivers.

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