The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) obtained authorization from a California federal court last November to serve a John Doe summons on the virtual currency firm Coinbase in order to obtain customer information to determine whether customers were using virtual currency to avoid paying income taxes.

Although the summons was issued in December, Coinbase has not provided the information requested in the summons and the IRS filed a petition with the Court requesting that the summons be enforced.

This is another example of how the government is using different techniques in the ever growing digital age to obtain access to customer information from companies in order to further an investigation. Virtual currency accounts can be added to cell phone location data, social media accounts and email accounts.

[View source.]