The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged and arrested Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin investor famously known as Bitcoin Jesus, for allegedly evading taxes of up to $50 million.

According to an official release by the DOJ, the indictment against Ver was unsealed on April 29, and he was arrested in Spain over the weekend.

The indictment accuses Ver of filing false tax returns, committing mail fraud, and tax evasion between 2011 and 2017 through his companies MemoryDealers Inc. and Agilestar Inc., which dealt in computer and networking equipment.

Ver, who began purchasing thousands of bitcoins for himself and his firms in 2011, gained widespread recognition as Bitcoin Jesus for his promotion of BTC. By February 2014, Ver and his companies had acquired approximately 131,000 BTC, with about 73,000 BTC allegedly belonging to MemoryDealers and Agilestar.

In the same year, Ver renounced his U.S. citizenship and obtained citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean country. The DOJ alleges that Ver failed to report his capital gains from the sale of his assets, including bitcoins, as required by his expatriation.

Ver is accused of providing misleading information to U.S. authorities, concealing the number of bitcoins he owned and undervaluing his companies in tax reports. He is also alleged to have sold a large portion of bitcoins owned by his companies in 2017 for approximately $240 million in cash, without reporting the transactions or paying taxes on the gains.

Despite no longer being a U.S. citizen, Ver was obligated to report the transactions to the Internal Revenue Service and pay taxes on his companies' dividends, as they were still U.S. corporations, according to the DOJ.

The U.S. government plans to initiate Ver's extradition process to face trial for the allegations against him. As the case unfolds, it marks a significant development in the legal landscape surrounding cryptocurrency and taxation.