Topic: MemoryDealers aka Roger Ver Arrested! - page 6. (Read 1726 times)

Roger Ver did tax evasion, not tax avoidance.

He didn't report all of the true capital gains he made. If he did tax avoidance, he need to report all the gains to IRS, but he could make a fake story by saying it's a charity money for non-profit business or other thing that didn't get/very low tax.

This is not happen on rich people only, but it happens here too!

Someone who live in third world country and get paid enough here need to report their earnings.

It's the characteristics of certain people to scam and scam and scam until they're caught.

I still remember the series of topics on this forum a couple of years ago from newbies who complained why the bitcoin they had bought never reached their wallets. Bitcoin that they had bought from bitcoin.com little did they know that Ver was scamming them by selling bcash to these newbies in the name of bitcoin.

Obviously he thought scamming the government (aka tax evasion) is the same as scamming a bunch of newbies and got caught.

I am surprised he actually still posted on Bitcointalk. I heard about him years ago when there was that entire bitcoin cash vs Bitcoin saga. I remember watching all those interviews he did phrasing bitcoin cash over bitcoin. He was a little crazy in some of his videos.

So It’s unfortunate what happened to him. Today was also CZ from Binance sentencing and he got 4 months in prison. Couple weeks ago SBF was sentenced also. Seems the government is really cracking down.

I read the full indictment, and it looks pretty bad. The thing where he allegedly decided in 2016 to file a 2011 gift tax return saying that he had gifted bitcoins to his partner stood out as especially bad to me. (I wonder: why are they allowed to use quotes from emails between Ver and his lawyer?)

The indictment is just one side of the story, though. It seems to me that the best argument from Ver will be that it was an unintentional mistake. Ver apparently had a bunch of bitcoins floating around between himself-personally and mostly-disregarded-entity S-corps. Pre-expatriation, it may not have been important whether the bitcoins belonged to him or the corporations, so it may have been reasonable for him to not put much thought into the matter. But then it does very much matter during the appraisal of the corporations, and it all gets even more complicated when the S-corps automatically become C-corps after expatriation. That's all very confusing. If I was in that situation, I could see making some sort of honest mistake regarding all of that mess. Though the indictment does try to provide a lot of evidence for intent, and it would've been an awfully big mistake, apparently.

An important detail to note is that this was a grand jury empaneled in June 2023, with the indictment filed in February, and then it was just recently unsealed after he was arrested. There clearly is a DoJ-wide mandate to target crypto, but I don't think that this was intentionally planned to coincide with the Samourai case, or with Ver's book, or anything like that.

I'm not a big fan of the guy overall, but since he's having a very bad day, I'd like to say some nice things about him for a second. He put a lot of effort into building the very-early Bitcoin ecosystem. He's a anarcho-capitalist like me, which is cool. I saw that he once made a large donation to antiwar.com. He's a free-thinker and a freedom-lover, somebody who recognizes that something is terribly wrong with the world, and wants to do something about it. If I had to rank all people on Earth from my favorite to least-favorite, I'd put Ver above where I'd put "every person I don't know anything about", since there are way more experiences/ideas/values I share with Ver than I share with eg. some random farmer in China. So I hope this legal situation turns out well for him, especially since this seems to be part of a larger "war on crypto".

What else can be said?

He evaded taxes and he now is being punished for it. He is not the first billionaire to evade taxes nor will he be the last. Despite what kind of person they are or how they contributed to a specific cause such as bitcoin is not considered in law. If you do not uphold a law then that is totally on you.

Many rich people try to evade as much tax as they can it’s honestly crazy especially thinking just how much money they have.

I agree with you 100%
As for folks decrying governments - for some reason especially the US - regulating the crypto currencies and taxing them, I have no problem with regulations and paying taxes on them. Let's face it - crypto is money. Why on earth would anyone think that governments would not want a piece of it (taxes) and regulate it as all other forms of money are?

In the US finance laws/rules often seem complex but are actually pretty clear cut. The complexity only comes from trying to evade them by looking for every possible loophole. Work within those guidelines and you are good. Push the boundaries or outright break them and yes, you will face legal problems. I've been a miner since 2014 and have had zero issues with the IRS simply because I pay what is owed.

Would I prefer to not be taxed? Sure. I'd also like to fly and spit diamonds but that is not how the world works.

Although tax avoidance is completely legal, it is dangerous. You can freely do that but you have to make sure that you're a friend with the government. If not, there's always a reason for them to give you headache. There's always something for which you'd be held accountable.

It seems that what Ver is doing as far as not declaring every single coin that he has or undervaluing his companies is common. I doubt if there's a single company that makes honest-to-goodness declarations. It's just unfortunate that Ver is associated with crypto.

But it's certainly wiser not to create a link with your coins if you intend not to honestly report it.

I would not defend Roger in any matter, but this is just another confirmation of why anonymity is important.
The US is putting serious pressure on the regulation of the Bitcoin system (I can't shake the impression that they put themselves as the main and only judges here) and we were afraid that they would ban cryptocurrencies. 

Almost like Al Capone 

That is probably the easiest way they found to arrest him

What war? Roger Ver is a well known scammer. I am amazed at how he managed to dodge prison so far.   But now he and CZ can spend turns dropping the soap in the prison shower.

The fact that you consider his arrest an act of war against the Bitcoin community says a lot about you.  

I read about Roger Ver's arrest, frankly, I don't see it as an ideal thing to do but then the feds are just after what they can't control (blockchain and cryptocurrency) and since they can't get a grip on what can either control it or shut it down (Satoshi Nakamoto) it is ideal they set their gaze on the next closest big thing and Roger Ver happens to fall under their radar. Its really not a good one for the crypto space.

How are we at war? Kindly pardon my ignorance here as a noob , I may not have fully understood. Although I have learned not to believe everything I read on the Internet but from the news publication if there's any truth to it, MemoryDealers broke the law and he is facing the consequences for it.

I agree.  Coinjoin can't do much.  We need robustness, privacy on sender and receiver by default.  Amounts hidden.  And all that in exchange for a reasonable transaction fee.  Bitcoin, despite efforts, cannot fulfill these requirements.  Samourai was the best coinjoin solution, and it's not cheap, not truly private and not even running anymore.

We need Monero now more than ever. 

We live in a clown world where you can be a citizen of another country and the US can get you arrested and extradited there. They can also imprison you for alleged crimes committed against its monetary policy which is another joke of a law.

Think about a scenario where you live in some remote country and one day local police arrests you and says you're going to the US because you did something that's forbidden there and they want to prosecute you. You don't even speak English and don't know US laws. This is how dumb this can get.

I'm not going to pity Roger because he did some shady shit in his life with that bch - sv fork and spamming bitcoin to show BCH is cheaper to transact with but he doesn't deserve prison.

As far as I know Ver claimed to have renounced his U.S. citizenship and was instead using a Saint Kitts passport he had acquired by just giving the island nation a lump sum of money ($600k iirc). He was very vocal against federal agents, their actions as well as the overall tactics of the U.S. government. We used to relentlessly mock him here for him liking to support Bitcoin Cash over the original bitcoin.

The U.S. is just trying to send a message that it's not to be messed with. Surely this was a long time coming. They knew his whereabouts, history and were actively tracking him. Roger just didn't see it coming. He probably by this point has the USD 50m that they're alleging he forfeited but damn, what an expensive price to pay. This is just the U.S. gov saying "go with out ways or there's no free market for you".

Well, indeed mr. Ver was an investor at several startups that may or may not make him liable for U.S. taxes. Ver also used to have a very moralistic approach at supporting bitcoin saying that bitcoin's success could end the U.S. gov's power to keep killing innocents and children across the globe. It's somewhere in between that time and today that he got caught into being a relentless capitalist himself, essentially feeding into the same system that kills the children...

But still, wow! Even for a person I used to say I didn't like I can't stand seeing him being arrested in a nation he was never obliged to pay taxes at over tax fraud allegations. A sealed indictment is such a scummy way to go. The U.S. probably spent millions on this internationally coordinated investigation.

FYI: The US 'exit tax' has been in effect since 2008 and folks in the USA with money have always been well aware of it. Ver obviously was and paid what he thought would be enough to throw the IRS off his scent. Problem is -- he apparently took it further and lied about his US-based companies BTC holdings while continuing to extract a sizeable portion of it for himself after he changed his citizenship.

Bitcoin Jesus is finally down by the US government, and who's going to be their next target? The US government is taking aggressive actions against crypto currencies investors and platforms from so many weeks and I'm very sure if they continue doing that then most of the platforms will stop providing their services to US citizens.

The policies of the US are too strong, and that guy Roger Ver has done something which was against the policies of the US government. Tax evasion of $50M is a huge amount that guy has been enjoying his life even after doing something like that. Now, he's arrested, let's see what's going to happen to him now.

One thing I've learned since I was a little kid, if Wesley Snipes didn't succeed in avoiding taxes, I certainly won't succeed either.

Better lose hand than whole arm.

Us and their laws, they literally will always find ways to take control and milk others.

 I never knew this guy but I can say he really did mess up trying to act smart against the law even when he was having these numbers of bitcoins.

Though if he was really someone who really believes in bitcoin and stand to keep his nickname “Bitcoin Jesus ” in truth then he will still be a HODLer and the quantities of bitcoin he would have accumulated or still be having now will be enough for him to pay the $50m fine without him going bankrupt.

The US government will be happy now, since they are enjoying from the fact that bitcoin is the world best store of value from thousands of dollars to now millions of dollars

You can't have boating accidents with Bitcoin, they see everything.


It's war on privacy - transparent cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin give them more power.