The IRS is asking an appeals court to throw aside a challenge from bitcoin entrepreneur Rowland Marcus Andrade, trying to reverse summonses issued for his financial records. Along with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the agency produced a legal brief on February 10 claiming that the court lacks jurisdiction since no official legal procedures follow the case originally brought before federal court against Andrade and his company, ABTC Corporation.
Investigating ABTC Corporation, the IRS sought to ascertain whether Bank Secrecy Act financial reporting rules were broken. Suspecting Andrade’s affiliation to ABTC, the agency sought access to his personal financial records as part of its probe. Andrade argues, though, that he was not adequately advised on the summonses.
The investigation goes back to 2021; the IRS sent summonses to Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase in May 2023 to gather Andrade’s and ABTC’s financial records. Later, Andrade claimed that the Right to Financial Privacy Act (RFPA) mandated that the IRS should have informed him, but that they had not.
According court records, Andrade’s attorney found the summonses and asked for copies from the IRS. The IRS had sent notifications to Andrade’s company address and reissued summonses by September; these were returned as undeliverable in October. Andrade responded in February 2024 by alleging a breach of financial privacy laws by suing Texas to contest the IRS’s actions.
Declining Andrade’s motion to revoke the summonses, the district court decided in May that the IRS had followed RFPA policies in reissuing the alerts. The court also decided the matter moot since the banks had already sent the IRS the required financial records.
By August, Andrade escalated the matter to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking to prevent the IRS from using the bank records while the case was under appeal. However, the IRS and DOJ maintain that Andrade has no claim for damages or attorney fees, as they argue no statutory violation occurred.
The case now awaits a decision from the Fifth Circuit, which will determine whether to uphold the district court’s ruling or allow Andrade’s appeal to move forward.
Additionally, in 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Andrade, then CEO of NAC Foundation, with conducting an unregistered securities offering involving AML Bitcoin, a token marketed as an advanced version of Bitcoin.
