A York County, Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty to charges relating to years worth of improper tax return filings. According to a release from the United States Department of Justice, 45-year-old Waylon Wilcox of Dillsburg filed false income tax returns for years 2021 and 2022. Authorities said Wilcox had sold 97 pieces of digital artwork from a “CryptoPunks” collection of “10,000 unique art characters.”
The DOJ confirmed that: Each Punk was unique and contained digital proof of ownership that could be tracked on a blockchain, a digitally distributed, decentralized, public ledger. Two Punks from the same blockchain could look identical but were not interchangeable, meaning they were nonfungible.
These “non-fungible tokens”, also known as NFTs, Wilcox had sold for millions of dollars but, when filing for taxes, Wilcox checked no when asked if he sold, exchanged, or received virtual currency for his 2021 tax filing. Wilcox also checked no in 2022 when asked if he received, sold, or exchanged digital assets.
When a taxpayer sells an NFT, including a Punk, then the taxpayer must report sales proceeds and any gains or losses from the sale of the NFT on their tax return. Because of this, Wilcox’s underreported income led to his owed taxes being reduced by roughly $3 million between 2021 and 2022. Wilcox later pleaded guilty on April 9 of 2025 to two counts of filing false individual income tax returns.
