The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to recover billions of dollars worth of cryptos in delinquent claims next year.
During the 2021 fiscal year, the department replenished the treasury under this item by $ 3.5 billion. This is the equivalent of 93% of all seized assets in illegal investigations - cases of electronic fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking, and tax fraud.
The figure includes 69,370 BTC confiscated in the case of the Silk Road darknet marketplace. The division also brought to justice a former Microsoft developer who used the crypto to hide the $10M appropriated from the company.
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“I suppose this trend to continue in the next fiscal year. Cryptocurrencies are involved in an increasing number of crimes,” said Jim Lee, head of the IRS's criminal investigation department.
The IRS Criminal Investigation Department has prioritized training and implementing technologies for analyzing cryptocurrencies and blockchains to uncover complex cyber-financial criminal schemes. To that end, Northern Virginia will open an Advanced Collaboration and Data Center in 2022.
According to Lee, the IRS may request additional funding of $ 80 billion to meet these goals.