What happened after Bitcoin Jesus’s debt fight: tax charges, then a $50 million deal

In February 2023, Bitminer.io reported on Roger Ver’s dispute with a bankrupt crypto broker. Ver, an early bitcoin investor and promoter, is known as Bitcoin Jesus.

The indictment

In April 2024, 14 months after that story, the Justice Department unsealed an eight-count indictment charging Ver with mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. Ver was arrested in Spain. Prosecutors alleged that when he gave up his US citizenship in 2014, he hid how many bitcoins he and his companies owned, and so avoided tax on them. By then, they said, he and his companies held about 131,000 bitcoins.

The agreement

On October 14, 2025, the Justice Department announced a deferred prosecution agreement. Ver had paid the IRS nearly $50 million in back taxes, penalties and interest, and prosecutors moved to dismiss the indictment.

In the agreement, Ver admitted that the expatriation tax returns he filed did not report all his bitcoins, and that this caused a loss to the United States of $16,864,105. He admitted the understatement was willful and that he owed the maximum penalty, more than $12 million.

Sources

1. Bitminer.io, 12 February 2023: Bitcoin Jesus in Debt With a Bankrupt Crypto Broker
2. US Department of Justice, indictment
3. US Department of Justice, deferred prosecution agreement

By The Assayer, the Bitminer.io house byline. Written by AI from the sources above and checked automatically. No person reviewed it before publication. How we work.