For the first time in history, a State has seized NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens: in fact, it was not just one, but three NFTs, and that were owned by three people accused of defrauding £1.4 million (around 1.7 million euros) to the public treasury. It has been in the UK.
These three suspects participated in a plot that used about 250 fake companies to evade VAT which they had to pay to the British treasury. Revenue and Customs obtained a court order to seize £5,000 worth of digital assets and the three NFTs of digital artwork owned by the suspects as a way of collecting part of that public debt. These three NFTs are not yet known for their worth but are “being investigated.”
How to buy Bitcoins safely and without risk
UK warns those who use new technologies to hide fraud
From the direction of Revenue and Customs they have said that this is a warning: those who want to hide illicit money by buying digital assets will not have it so easy. “We constantly adapt to new technologies to ensure we are up to date with the how criminals and evaders seek to hide their assets”, they have said from the British public department.
While Bitcoin has been hailed as the digital answer to currency, NFTs have been touted as the digital answer to collectibles. You just have to see that a few days ago, in the British country itself, John Lennon’s son put his father’s objects up for sale, but only in the form of NFTs and he will continue to keep the objects.
The UK Revenue Agency said fraud suspects use “sophisticated methods” to try to hide their identities, including false and stolen identities, false addresses, unregistered prepaid mobile phones, virtual private networks (VPN), fake bills and pretending to engage in legitimate business activities. As in this case the purchase of NFT assets.
In Canada they will include crypto within forms of money laundering
This information comes on the same day that we have learned that Canada is expanding the scope of anti-money laundering surveillance laws.
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, has announced that the Government will also take into account crowdfunding and the payment service providers they useincluding cryptocurrencies.