Blockchain analyst ZachXBT described the US IRS’s persistent attempts to involve him in criminal investigations

What’s new? An anonymous blockchain researcher under the nickname ZachXBT, known for his publications about hacking and fraud in the crypto space, has spoken out about being harassed by agents from the Criminal Investigations Division of the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). According to the analyst, agents visited his old residential addresses and wrote to his private email hidden from the public with his real name with publicly available methods of communication.

Source: Twitter.com

What else is known? According to ZachXBT, these situations have happened about five times in the past few months. He explained that he decided to come forward publicly because he found such actions by the IRS to be unprofessional and a violation of personal boundaries.

“I have always been willing to support victims of scams with documentation needed by law enforcement to aid cases but if you overstep personal boundaries why would I want to assist you?” the anonymous expert wondered.

As evidence, he attached pictures of business cards and paper letters with requests for contact left by agents at his residential addresses. The post also contains screenshots of emails inviting the analyst to a face-to-face meeting, including in a government building.

One such appeal was written by an employee of the Washington criminal division of the IRS: he praised ZachXBT’s work in blockchain analysis and asked for help in investigating several cryptocurrency crimes. “I've been an IRS-CI special agent for a while, but I’m pretty new to the crypto/cyber arena and I was hoping you could give me a sense of what I should be looking at if I wanted to make the biggest impact as I evaluate new potential cases,” the plea reads.

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ZachXBT is often the first in the crypto community to report hacks of various platforms and fraud cases, as well as tracking the movement of criminal funds and publishing the wallet addresses of attackers. He frequently uses tools from the TRM Labs platform to analyze them. In March, he reported on the Solana meme token presale scam, as well as a possible scam on the BitForex exchange.