According to BlockBeats, on December 13, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Frank Richard Ahlgren III, a resident of Austin, Texas, was sentenced to two years in prison for falsely reporting $3.7 million in Bitcoin trading income. Court documents show that Ahlgren began investing in Bitcoin in 2011 and purchased approximately 1,366 Bitcoins through Coinbase in 2015, when the highest price was about $495.56. In October 2017, he sold 640 Bitcoins at a price of about $5,807.53 each, making a profit of $3.7 million to buy a house in Park City, Utah.
To evade taxes, Ahlgren provided false transaction records to his accountant, falsely reporting purchase costs much higher than the actual prices. Between 2018 and 2019, he concealed over $650,000 in Bitcoin transaction records through multiple wallets, face-to-face cash transactions, and mixers. His tax evasion resulted in over $1 million in tax losses. In addition to sentencing him to imprisonment, the court also ordered him to pay $1,095,031 in restitution.
Lucy Tan, a special agent in charge of the Houston office of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, emphasized that this is the first criminal tax evasion case entirely focused on cryptocurrency, which will serve as a significant warning to the industry. Currently, the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and the Texas Attorney General's office are conducting further investigations into the case.
