[nullc]

That's how it went for Craig Wright, famous Satoshi imposter-- prior to his bitcoin infamy he stole millions via fraudulent GST refunds and fraudulent refundable R&D tax credits then got caught attempting tens of millions more. He fled Australia, repaid part of the fraud and has generally been living it up elsewhere in the world with no further consequences from his tax fraud.

[an0malous]

If you’re going to commit crimes, be ambitious. Theft, murder, and lying all have lesser punishments the bigger you go with them because you get grouped with the investor class that does these things all the time and has immunity from severe consequences

[nullc]

It really is the case-- Post Covid Wright's style of GST fraud[1] went pretty much viral and they did start heavy enforcement actions, but their videos are full of raiding the homes of people living in public housing who stole a few thousand. I guess if you stole enough to pay for a fancy law firm like Wright did, you're much better off.

[Wright's whole Satoshi cosplay seems to have resulted from this fraud because when the ATO did catch him they asked the obvious question: "Where did the money you were supposedly spending come from in the first place?" Bitcoin was just hitting the news bigtime then so he claimed to be an early bitcoin miner, but the amounts in question were so large that he needed to eventually extend it to being Satoshi to try to make it make sense.]

[1] in AU instead of not charging resellers sales tax businesses just apply to have their sales tax paid refunded, and it more or less works on the honor system. So you can spin up a bunch of on-paper businesses, make some sham sales between them-- the buying side claims the GST refund, the selling side just goes out of business without ever paying the sales tax.