The US Department of Justice has announced that it has seized $3.36 billion worth of Bitcoin from James Zhong, who defrauded the illegal trading site Silk Road 10 years ago. This is the second-largest amount of cryptocurrency seized by the US Department of Justice in an operation. In 2020, the Bitcoins of a hacker who stole 69 thousand Bitcoins from Silk Road were seized.
It was announced that 50 thousand 676 Bitcoins were seized in the raid on the Georgia state house of James Zhong, who was arrested and confessed to his crime, in November 2021, and since the value of Bitcoin was over $ 60 thousand at the time of the raid, the amount seized was $ 3.36 billion. .
your place underfound on computer kept in a vault
In the raid, which was carried out as part of the investigation to find lost Bitcoins linked to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the shut down illegal trading site Silk Road, Bitcoins were seized, which were stored on a computer inside an underground vault at Zhong’s home.
In 2012, Zhong created a series of Silk Road accounts to hide his identity and defrauded the illegal trading site. The hacker then transferred the Bitcoins he seized from the site to his personal accounts.
Southern New York District Attorney Damian Williams said, “The huge amount of Bitcoins that have been missing for almost 10 years has increased in value in the process and turned into a $ 3.3 billion enigma. As a result of new technology cryptocurrency tracking systems and the work of the police, an impressive amount of crime revenue has been seized.” said.
Zhong, who snatched all the Bitcoins he stole, has been released
Zhong’s lawyer, Bachner, said that his client confessed to his crime 10 years ago and handed over all the Bitcoin he had seized. Zhong will not pay compensation to Ross Ulbricht, who is a victim for stealing Bitcoins from Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence and is the founder of the illegal trading site Silk Road, which was shut down by the state in 2013.
Zhong surrendered to the court 80 percent of the shares of RE&D Investments, the real estate company he co-founded with Clayton Kemker, as well as $661,900 and an additional 174 Bitcoins. In addition to these, he was released by borrowing 310 thousand dollars from the court. Zhong’s partner, Kemker, said that the developments surprised him and that until now Zhong thought he got rich by mining cryptocurrencies in the early days of Bitcoin.
