{"id":88197,"date":"2023-12-13T13:46:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T11:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=88197"},"modified":"2025-09-13T16:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T13:30:00","slug":"irs-names-the-biggest-crypto-cases-of-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/irs-names-the-biggest-crypto-cases-of-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"IRS names the biggest crypto cases of 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Internal Revenue Service\u2019s (IRS) Criminal Investigation division \u043e\u043f\u0443\u0431\u043b\u0438\u043a\u043e\u0432\u0430\u043b\u043e<\/a> a list of ten of the department\u2019s most well-known and high-profile cases in 2023 \u2014 four of which relate to digital assets.<\/p>\n

In eighth place was Amir Bruno Elmaani, the founder of the Bruno Block crypto project. In 2017 he launched the Oyster Pearl coin, designed as a utility token for an online data-storage platform.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cElmaani did not file a tax return and reported no income in 2018. However, he spent more than $10 million on the purchase of several yachts, including $1.6 million on a carbon-fiber yacht, hundreds of thousands of dollars at a hardware store, and more than $700,000 on the purchase of two homes,\u201d the IRS explained.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He was sentenced to 48 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $5.5 million.<\/p>\n

The seventh item on the list is James Zhong, the defendant in the Silk Road theft case. In April his was sentenced<\/a> to a year and one day in prison for withdrawing 50,000 BTC from the platform in 2012.<\/p>\n

Authorities also seized all assets tied to the stolen assets from Zhong, which were valued at $3.4 billion.<\/p>\n

In fourth place was New Hampshire resident Ian Freeman for money laundering using Bitcoin. According to the IRS, the man helped launder $10 million for various online scammers.<\/p>\n

Freeman was sentenced to 96 months in prison and two years of probation. He was also ordered to pay restitution to the victims.<\/p>\n

In third place was Karl Sebastian Greenwood, co-founder of the OneCoin cryptocurrency pyramid, accused of international fraud of $4 billion. The project was initially pitched as a high-yield cryptocurrency, but the coin was never launched.<\/p>\n

In December 2022 Greenwood pleaded guilty<\/a> to fraud and money laundering. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison<\/a> and ordered to pay about $300 million in fines and restitution.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, roughly half of IRS cryptocurrency investigations have formed<\/a> tax-underpayment cases, whereas three years ago more than 90% were related to money laundering.<\/p>\n

In December the IRS demanded<\/a> from FTX to pay $24 billion. Lawyers for the fallen exchange intend to appeal the \u201cabsurd\u201d ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation division published a list of ten of the department’s most well-known and high-profile cases in 2023 \u2014 four of which relate to digital assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1154,558,26],"class_list":["post-88197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crimes","tag-taxes","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"12","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88199,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88197\/revisions\/88199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}