The Internal Revenue Service could seize cryptocurrency valued at billions of dollars that’s linked to tax fraud and other crimes in the coming year, according to the agency’s head of criminal investigations.
The IRS seized $3.5 billion worth of cryptocurrencies during fiscal year 2021, a figure that accounted for 93% of all the assets seized by tax enforcement that year, according to an IRS criminal investigation annual report published Thursday.
“I expect a trend of crypto seizures to continue as we move forward into fiscal year ‘22,” IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jim Lee said on a call with reporters. “We’re seeing crypto involved in a number of our crimes as we move forward.”
In the past year, the IRS’s criminal unit seized billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies connected to cases involving a range of criminal activities, such as wire fraud, money laundering, the distribution of illegal narcotics, and tax fraud. That included $1 billion stolen from the Silk Road, an online Bitcoin exchange that was shut down in 2013.
The unit also prosecuted a former Microsoft Corp. software developer who used cryptocurrency to hide $10 million he embezzled from the company.
