The U.S. Department of Justice seized over $3.36 billion in BTC associated to Silk Road that has been lacking since 2012, per a release from the Justice Department.
James Zhong, an exploiter who stole 51,680.32473733 BTC from Silk Road, has pleaded responsible to committing wire fraud so as to steal bitcoin from the darkish internet market.
“James Zhong committed wire fraud over a decade ago when he stole approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated. “For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery.”
From 2011 till 2013, Silk Road served as a market for customers to get hold of medicine anonymously, in addition to different objects not simply obtained by way of regulated marketplaces. In 2015, Silk Road’s founder Ross Ulbricht was arrested and sentenced to life in jail.
“Thanks to state-of-the-art cryptocurrency tracing and good old-fashioned police work, law enforcement located and recovered this impressive cache of crime proceeds,” Williams continued. “This case shows that we won’t stop following the money, no matter how expertly hidden, even to a circuit board in the bottom of a popcorn tin.”
In September of 2012, Zhong executed a profitable wire fraud try by creating at the very least 9 faux accounts which concurrently launched the Silk Road withdrawal course of creating over 140 transactions in speedy succession. The bitcoin was dispersed into a number of accounts which was then transferred to a number of addresses, or bitcoin wallets.
Initially, Zhong would deposit anyplace between 200 and a couple of,000 BTC to begin an account and inside moments he would set off speedy withdrawals for the quantity of BTC used to fund the account, however he would launch a number of withdrawals and the system couldn’t preserve observe of what number of withdrawals have been paid out.
On November 9, 2021 IRS-CI brokers seized “50,491.06251844 Bitcoin of the approximately 53,500 Bitcoin Crime Proceeds (a) in an underground floor safe; and (b) on a single-board computer that was submerged under blankets in a popcorn tin stored in a bathroom closet. In addition, law enforcement recovered $661,900 in cash, 25 Casascius coins (physical bitcoin) with an approximate value of 174 Bitcoin, 11.1160005300044 additional Bitcoin, and four one-ounce silver-colored bars, three one-ounce gold-colored bars, four 10-ounce silver-colored bars, and one gold-colored coin.”
Zhong will probably be sentenced by Judge Gardephe on February 22, 2023, at 3:00 p.m.
