IRS Criminal Investigation Warns of Counterfeit Letters Pushing Crypto Holders to a Fake Compliance Portal

The IRS Criminal Investigation division issued a fraud alert Thursday warning that fraudsters are mailing counterfeit letters to cryptocurrency holders, instructing them to enroll in a “Digital Asset Compliance Portal” before a deadline. The agency does not operate any such portal, and the letters do not come from the IRS.

The letters arrive in plain envelopes and are printed to imitate an official notice, styled as coming from the Department of the Treasury, carrying a notice number and a tax year range spanning 2017 through 2026, according to a Tuesday Coinbase blog post offering more details. Each includes a QR code that resolves to a look-alike domain built to resemble irs.gov.

The IRS says it does not send QR codes in official correspondence and will never ask taxpayers to register their exchanges or wallets. Recipients can confirm any real notice through an online account at irs.gov and report suspected fraud to the agency and to the FTC.

“Criminals continue to exploit public trust in government agencies by creating convincing fake websites and official-looking correspondence,” said IRS-CI Chief Jarod Koopman, who told taxpayers to stop and verify the source before responding to unexpected requests for personal information.

The fake portal asks visitors to name the exchange or hardware wallet they use, estimate the value of their holdings, and then supply a phone number for a “verification” call. A caller posing as support tries to extract a one-time code, a password or a recovery phrase, or to talk the target into moving funds to a wallet the attacker controls.

The look-alike domains were traced to a registration made days before the letters went out, through a Hong Kong registrar, with hosting in Romania on a network already known for FedEx and banking phishing pages.

Genuine IRS crypto correspondence has become common enough for the ruse to work. The agency has sent educational compliance letters to suspected under-reporters since 2019, when it mailed more than 10,000 notices to virtual currency owners, and volumes climbed further ahead of new 1099-DA broker reporting rules.

Related Listen: DEX in the City: Why the Supreme Court’s FTC Ruling Could Rewire Crypto Regulation

{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@id":"https:\/\/unchainedcrypto.com\/irs-criminal-investigation-warns-of-counterfeit-letters-pushing-crypto-holders-to-a-fake-compliance-portal\/#arve-youtube-vuaccxhap6m","@type":"VideoObject","embedURL":"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/vUACcXHAp6M?feature=oembed&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&autohide=1&playsinline=1&autoplay=0"}

The post IRS Criminal Investigation Warns of Counterfeit Letters Pushing Crypto Holders to a Fake Compliance Portal appeared first on Unchained.