US, UK, Canada, Australia, Netherlands Share Crypto Criminal Leads, Including a Potential $1B Ponzi Scheme – Regulation Bitcoin News

Over 50 cases of crypto-related crimes were identified and shared by officials from Australia, the U.K. and Canada.

Authorities Share Information on Global Crypto Crime

Bloomberg published Friday that heads of international tax enforcement for the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement countries (J5) met in London last week to exchange intelligence to determine sources of illicit cross-border cryptoactivity.

In response to the call from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for countries to take more action to combat tax criminality, the J5 was created. It’s comprised of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the Fiscale Inlichtingen- en Opsporingsdienst (FIOD), HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).

The publication reported that more than 50 criminal cases related to crypto were identified by the officers during the meeting.

Jim Lee (chief of the criminal investigation division at the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS), spoke to reporters on Friday.

Some of these leads … involve individuals with significant NFT transactions revolving around potential tax or other financial crimes throughout our jurisdictions.

He added that one lead “appears to be a $1 billion Ponzi scheme,” noting that this lead “touches every single J5 country.”

Moreover, the officials have identified leads involving decentralized exchanges and financial technology companies, Lee said, adding that there could be announcements on “significant targets” as soon as this month.

Reporters were briefed by Niels Obbink (chief and general director, Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service):

The new digital way of laundering trade-based money is through NFTs.

Obbink noted that crypto has “less control and less supervision and a limited regulation that makes it vulnerable for fraud.” He stressed, “it must have our attention.”

How do countries share data about crypto criminals? Please comment below.

Kevin Helms

Kevin is a graduate of Austrian Economics. He discovered Bitcoin in 2011, and has been an advocate ever since. He’s interested in Bitcoin security, open source systems, network effects, cryptography, and how economics intersect with cryptography.