UK’s revenue department seizes NFTs in a 1.4 million Euro tax fraud case

UK’s revenue and tax department Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) department has seized three Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) as a part of the probe into a suspected VAT (value-added tax) fraud case. According to a report by BBC News, the probe is a part of a fraud case that involves a total of 250 fake companies.

The report also says that HMRC has arrested three people on the suspicion of defrauding the government department of 1.4 million Euros (or $1.5 billion approximately or Rs 11.96 crore). HMRC suspects that the scammers allegedly used ‘sophisticated methods’ to try to hide their identities. The fraudsters used stolen identities, unregistered mobile numbers, fake addresses, false invoices, and VPNs to scam people. Additionally, some of the scammers pretended to engage in legitimate business activities in a bid to dupe users.

Announcing the details, deputy director economic crime, Nick Sharp, said that the seizing NFTs serves a warning to all the people who believe that they “can use crypto assets to hide money from HMRC”. “We constantly adapt to new technology to ensure we keep pace with how criminals and evaders look to conceal their assets,” he added.

Furthermore, the report said that HMRC, during its investigation, had secured a court order to detain the seized crypto assets worth about 5,000 Euros ($5,655 approximately or Rs 4.27 lakh) and three digital artwork NFTs that have not been valued yet.

HMRC government body is the first UK government body to seize NFTs.

What are NFTs?

NFTs or non-fungible tokens are digital tokens that can be used to represent ownership of special items. Ethereum.org says that NFTs enable us to tokenise things like art, collectibles and even real estate. NFTs can have only one owner at a time and this ownership cannot be modified at any point. However, ownership of NFTs can be transferred from one person to another.

NFTs are based on blockchain technology, which makes them immune to tampering. NFTs are often used for selling digital art. Lately, uses of NFTs are also being used by companies such as YouTube, Twitter, Lamborghini, Vodafone and Samsung among others.

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