Roger arrested

[bitmover]

Man Known as “Bitcoin Jesus” Evaded Nearly $50M in Taxes
An indictment was unsealed yesterday charging Roger Ver, an early investor in bitcoins, with mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. Ver was arrested this weekend in Spain based on the U.S. criminal charges. The United States will seek Ver’s extradition to stand trial in the United States.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/early-bitcoin-investor-charged-tax-fraud

Impressed to see early adopters being arrested! 50M is a lot of money!

Roger Ver is mostly known for his support of the BCH fork, which he was an activist since 2017

[TomPluz]

This is a surprising turn of events of Roger Ver, one of the few people who really benefitted a lot in owning and subsequently selling BTC in its pioneering years and is very much known to be leading his own Bitcoin Cash (BCH), first of the Bitcoin forks. Arrested in Spain, the man is facing mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns alleged to have caused a loss to the IRS of at least $48 million. So right now, we are seeing a barrage of many cases against people who worked and made money in the cryptocurrency industry. Lat year, we witnessed the fall of FTX and later on the 25-year sentence of Sam Bankman-Friend and then Changpeng Zhao just got four months of prison terms for violating US money-laundering laws when Binance allowed transactions circling on child sex abuse, the illegal drug trade and ‘terrorism’. This case on Roger Ver is worth watching and let's wait how many months or years will he get as a sentence. I am just wondering if there is really a coordinated movement by the US government to go after people in cryptocurrency.

[ABCbits]

As non-US citizen, reading this kind of news makes me think tax system in US is very complicated. It's also weird they decide to arrest him now, when government claim he sold his Bitcoin back on 2017 (7 years ago) and US government recently arrest of Samourai founder. I don't know whether Roger Ver actually do something wrong, so let's see what will he do in defense.

[Lucius]

The man was already in prison for selling illegal substances (if I'm not mistake pyrotechnics), so at least he has some experience if he ends up there again. It may sound heartless, but the IRS doesn't go after someone because they don't like them, but because that person owes them money - and someone who has a lot of money should be able to pay experts to tell them if they have any tax obligations or not.

Spain has proven to be a country that is wise to avoid if you have problems with the US, and John McAfee felt that on his own skin. Roger obviously hasn't learned anything from the mistakes of others, but he went down some wrong paths a long time ago and I can understand that only some from the early days of Bitcoin have some sympathy for him. I only remember him as a promoter of something he called Bitcoin, which was actually just a fork and nothing more.

[pawel7777]

Didn't he renounced his US citizenship ages ago especially for the purpose of not having to declare/pay taxes to the US Gov? As I believe even US citizens who permanently live/work abroad have to do so.
Apparently that wasn't enough.
He fought the law but the law won.

[bitmover]

I don't know whether Roger Ver actually do something wrong, so let's see what will he do in defense.

I am impressed how come this guy was free all those years after scamming so much people with that bitcoin cash (which is neither bitcoin nor cash)

He is a big scammer imo. He could have created his fork, but he didn't need to call it the real bitcoin and use bitcoin.com  to spread lies about it etc..

[ABCbits]

I don't know whether Roger Ver actually do something wrong, so let's see what will he do in defense.

I am impressed how come this guy was free all those years after scamming so much people with that bitcoin cash (which is neither bitcoin nor cash)

He is a big scammer imo. He could have created his fork, but he didn't need to call it the real bitcoin and use bitcoin.com  to spread lies about it etc..

I was talking whether he actually perform tax fraud or not. But when we're talking about his BCH promotion and bitcoin.com, he's definitely was in wrong. After all, he trick people into buying BCH when people think they buy BTC. In addition, there were some complain that people send BTC to BCH address or BCH to BTC address.

[Lucius]

I was talking whether he actually perform tax fraud or not. But when we're talking about his BCH promotion and bitcoin.com, he's definitely was in wrong. After all, he trick people into buying BCH when people think they buy BTC. In addition, there were some complain that people send BTC to BCH address or BCH to BTC address.

Some people still call him Bitcoin Jesus, even though he turned into Bitcoin Judas a long time ago - but that raises the question of whether he did more good or bad when it comes to Bitcoin. In my opinion, anyone who misleads other people at any time and thus causes them any damage (especially financial) cannot be considered a person who should continue to be respected because he did something good in the past.

Everyone gets punished sooner or later for the bad things they did in life, I think Roger is no exception.

[NotATether]

I don't know whether Roger Ver actually do something wrong, so let's see what will he do in defense.

I am impressed how come this guy was free all those years after scamming so much people with that bitcoin cash (which is neither bitcoin nor cash)

He is a big scammer imo. He could have created his fork, but he didn't need to call it the real bitcoin and use bitcoin.com  to spread lies about it etc..

Yeah, using bitcoin.com to promote Bitcoin Cash was really egregious, and I see it as more of a cash grab than advancing anything in either of those two blockchains.

That being said, not paying your taxes is something completely different and we regularly see arrests of people who don't send in their tax return forms.

[Freemind]

I am impressed how come this guy was free all those years after scamming so much people with that bitcoin cash (which is neither bitcoin nor cash)

He is a big scammer imo. He could have created his fork, but he didn't need to call it the real bitcoin and use bitcoin.com  to spread lies about it etc..

I don't know if Roger Ver is a scammer or not, but what I do know is that he has been attacking Bitcoin for many years. And the most annoying thing about that is that Ver didn't need to do it, it was the perfect excuse to promote his stupid fork and get a lot more money than he already had. I have always thought that Ver is nothing more than another well-known person in the industry who all he has done is leave the community with a bad image in front of the general public. Roger Ver could join the list with Do Kwon and others.