Coinbase User Sentenced to Two Years for Bitcoin Tax Fraud to Surrender Access to $124 Million Bitcoin Fortune
A Coinbase user sentenced to two years in prison for bitcoin tax fraud last month must surrender access to his $124 million bitcoin stash to secure $1 million in owed restitution, ruled a federal judge.
- An early Bitcoin investor and Coinbase user Frank Richard Ahlgren III, who was sentenced to two years in prison last month for falsely underreported capital gains linked to $3.7 million worth of bitcoin sales, has been ordered to hand over his private to allow U.S. officials to access his digital assets valued at approximately $124 million.
- Ahlgren is early bitcoin investor since 2011. He reportedly acquired 1,366 BTC through Coinbase in 2015 when bitcoin peaked at approximately $495 each and then used some of the proceeds to purchase a home in Park City, Utah.
- Ahlgren then concealed some of his profits from sales between 2017 and 2019 by providing false information to his accountant, claiming he had purchased the bitcoins at a higher price than he actually did.
- He now owes the government around $1 million in restitution from the criminal case and must provide any physical devices, along with any public keys, private keys, seed phrases or passphrases used to store the coins, ruled the U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman on Monday in federal court in Austin, Texas.
- Prosecutors requested the judge to force Ahlgren to reveal the location of at least 1,287 Bitcoin he moved in 2020 via a "mixing" service, which are now worth over $124 million after more than doubling in value last year.
"We will comply with a court directive, or to the extent that we have a question, we will direct it to the court. We appreciate the care that Judge Pitman has taken throughout this case," said his attorney Dennis Kainen.
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