Austin Man Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison for Filing False Tax Returns That Underreported Bitcoin Capital Gains

This move is notable as it does display at least one way that the federal government is regulating cryptocurrency.

An Austin man was sentenced Thursday to two years in federal prison for filing a false tax return that underreported the capital gains he earned from selling $3.7 million in bitcoins.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Frank Richard Ahlgren III filed false tax returns for 2017, 2018 and 2019 that either underreported or did not report the sale of $4 million worth of bitcoins, from which he had substantial gains.

Ahlgren was an early investor in Bitcoin and purchased bitcoins as early as 2011. In 2015, Ahlgren bought approximately 1,366 bitcoins using his accounts with Coinbase. The highest price Bitcoin sold for that year was approximately $495.56. In October 2017, Ahlgren sold approximately 640 bitcoins trading at approximately $5,807.53 per bitcoin for a total of $3.7 million. Ahlgren used the proceeds to purchase a house in Park City, Utah. According to court records, Ahlgren purchased the majority of the bitcoins used to buy the house in 2015 using his Coinbase account. Ahlgren lied to his accountant about the gains and losses from the sale of his bitcoins in a summary he provided to his accountant for his 2017 federal income tax return in order to conceal the full extent of his gain. Ahlgren then filed a false 2017 federal income tax return that substantially inflated the cost basis of the bitcoins, which had the effect of Ahlgren underreporting his true capital gain from his sale of bitcoins.

Ahlgren also sold bitcoins for more than $650,000 in both 2018 and 2019, which he did not report at all on his 2018 and 2019 tax returns. Ahlgren took several sophisticated steps to attempt to conceal his transactions on the bitcoin blockchain for these years, including moving his bitcoins through multiple wallets, meeting an individual in person to exchange bitcoins for cash and using mixers, which are designed to conceal the individual who made the particular transaction. Ahlgren had, in fact, blogged about his knowledge of mixers as ways to add anonymity to bitcoin transactions in May 2014. In total, the tax loss from Ahlgren’s criminal conduct was over $1 million.

“Frank Ahlgren III earned millions buying and selling bitcoins,” Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division said in a statement. “But instead of paying the taxes he knew were due, he lied to his accountant about the extent of a large portion of his gains and sought to conceal another chunk of his profits through sophisticated techniques designed to obscure his transactions on the bitcoin blockchain. That conduct today earned him a two-year sentence.”

In addition to his prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman for the Western District of Texas ordered Ahlgren to serve one year of supervised release and to pay $1,095,031 in restitution to the United States.

“Ahlgren will serve time because he believed his cryptocurrency transactions were untraceable. This case demonstrates that no one is above the law. My team at IRS Criminal Investigation has the expertise and tools to track financial activity, whether it involves dollars, pesos, or cryptocurrency,” Acting Special Agent in Charge Lucy Tan of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI)’s Houston Field Office said. “This case marks the first criminal tax evasion prosecution centered solely on cryptocurrency. As the prices for cryptocurrency are high, so is the temptation to not pay taxes on its sale. Avoid the temptation and avoid federal prison.”