Aliens TLDR

International tax officials have identified more than 50 leads to potential crypto tax crimes that may lead to official investigations in the coming weeks, including one case that could be a $1 billion Ponzi scheme.

American tax officials said Friday that they were following separate leads into scams focused on things like nonfungible tokens and other decentralized parts of the sector.

Top criminal tax and financial crimes officials from the UK, US, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, a group known as the J5, met in London this week to share intelligence and data to identify sources of cross-border illegal crypto activity, Bloomberg reported .

“Some of these leads I’m talking about, they involve individuals with significant NFT transactions revolving around potential tax or other financial crimes throughout our jurisdictions,” Jim Lee, the Internal Revenue Service’s chief of criminal investigations, told reporters Friday.

That’s billion with a B and this lead also touches every single J5 country.” The initiative highlights increasing scrutiny of risks, fraud and malfeasance in the burgeoning crypto industry.

The J5 tax officials have also identified leads involving decentralized exchanges and financial-technology companies, Lee said.