Italy's Guardia di Finanza has uncovered a €500,000 tax evasion operation tied to undeclared Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) holdings and a concealed cryptocurrency mining setup.
Six individuals across four Italian regions face tax assessments, plus additional administrative penalties on top of the base amount owed.
The case originated with a single trader in Piacenza whose undeclared mining income drew scrutiny from Rome's specialist Blockchain Analysis Unit - and eventually led investigators to a wider network of undeclared wallets.
What Happened
The Piacenza-based Guardia di Finanza, working with the Nucleo Speciale Tutela Privacy e Frodi Tecnologiche in Rome, traced transactions across six digital wallets using specialized blockchain analysis software. Investigators confirmed ownership of the wallets and linked them to six individuals residing in Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Marche, and Sicily.
Officers discovered a company warehouse repurposed as a full mining operation, containing a purpose-built rig running continuously and multiple high-performance GPUs.
Several digital wallets holding assets of undisclosed but "significant" value were seized on the spot.
None of the six individuals had declared their cryptocurrency holdings abroad, as required under Italian tax monitoring rules. Capital gains from selling mined cryptocurrency - subject to substitute tax under Italian law - had also gone unreported.
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Why It Matters
The case illustrates a pattern Italian authorities are actively targeting: traders who treat blockchain's public but pseudonymous ledger as a shield against tax obligations.
That assumption is increasingly wrong. Rome's specialist unit routinely reconstructs transaction histories and establishes legal ownership with enough certainty to open formal fiscal audits.
Italy has tightened its cryptocurrency tax framework in recent years, requiring residents to report foreign-held digital assets and taxing capital gains accordingly.
The Guardia di Finanza described the operation as part of a broader push against tax evasion in the digital economy - a sector it described as carrying "elevated fiscal risk profiles" due to its use of technologically advanced instruments.
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