In what is claimed to be the first haul of its kind in the UK, tax authorities have seized three NFTs valued at US$1.9 million as part of an investigation into an elaborate tax evasion scheme.
On February 14, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) arrested three people alleged to have conducted the fraud, which involved the use of false identities and a vast network of 250 fake ‘shell’ companies. In addition to the NFTs, other digital assets valued at approximately A$9,500 were also seized.
A Questionable Milestone?
Many in the crypto community saw the seizure as something of a milestone and an official acknowledgment that NFTs can be genuinely valuable assets, similar to real estate or motor vehicles – even as they joked about it:
Seizure Signals Value of NFTs
It’s important to note that the NFTs were not actually used to commit the fraud, but seized as assets. It’s common practice for authorities to impound assets in tax-evasion cases to cover the cost of court proceedings and lost tax. What makes this case exceptional is that authorities have seized NFTs as assets for the first time.
This may be the first NFT seizure during a criminal investigation in the UK, but it’s not the first time crypto has been seized: last year London’s Metropolitan Police impounded US$160 million in cryptocurrency as part of a money-laundering investigation.
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